With the second day of the Rally Great Britain over and only four stages remaining on Sunday, the intense fight for the World Rally Championship title is going firmly the way of Citroen driver Sébastien Loeb.
The Frenchman won four of the day’s six stages to hold a 30.2-second advantage over Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen overnight. With just 79 competitive kilometres left to run, Loeb must sense that a sixth world title is within his grasp, despite having started the rally a point down on Hirvonen.
However, the 35-year-old Frenchman is taking nothing for granted. “I’ve had a good day and made no mistakes,” he said at the end of the final stage. “But there’s another day still to go and anything can happen. These stages are really tricky and tomorrow there could be more rain.”
Events looked set to have a different complexion after Mikko Hirvonen was four seconds quicker than Loeb at the first split time on the opening stage, having started the day just over five seconds behind. By the end of the day’s first stage, Rhondda, the gap was down to less than three seconds. But on the next two stages, Loeb took 10 and then 11 seconds out of Hirvonen, to arrive at midday service in Cardiff with a 25-second overall lead.
From the ecstasy and nascent hope, Hirvonen experienced the agony of likely defeat. He placed the blame firmly on the car. “There’s something not right: it felt as though there was maybe something jammed in the transmission,” he said at the service halt in Cardiff. “We won’t know what it is until the team looks at the data. After the first stage of the day I really thought we were going to do it, but maybe the gap is too big now. It’s disappointing.”
‘Maybe Sébastien has just gone jet-powered’ – Malcolm Wilson
The Ford mechanics swarmed around his Focus WRC, replacing everything they could think of. After examining the evidence, they could find no fault. Ford team principal Malcolm Wilson said, “All the data looks good, so it’s a complete mystery. Maybe Sébastien has just gone jet-powered.”
In fact, Hirvonen was quickest on the next stage, pulling back 2.1 seconds from Loeb. But it was too little too late. With Loeb winning the final two stages of the day, his overnight lead grew to half a minute establishing a psychological hurdle that Hirvonen will find hard to overcome.
Adding to Citroen’s joy was third place for Dani Sordo, which the Spaniard wrested from Petter Solberg when the Norwegian’s windscreen wipers broke, meaning he had to drive the stages practically blind.
To lift his sixth world crown and 54th career victory, Loeb just has to keep his cool through tomorrow’s four stages. The crews will have two runs over the Port Talbot (17.41km) and Rheola (22.51km) stages, with the rally due to finish in Cardiff at 1400. After a “perfect day” today, Loeb is nearly home and dry.
But even when the title looks to be in the bag, things can go suddenly and dramatically wrong. In 1998, the legendary Spaniard Carlos Sainz was within a couple of hundred metres from the finish – which would have given him his third world title. Nobody – least of all Carlos himself – could have imagined that his Toyota would burst into flames within sight of the line, cremating his championship hopes in the cruellest possible way.
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