When Ogier almost lost everything in Jordan!

The scene went almost unnoticed and yet Sébastien Ogier spontaneously reported the incident at the finish of the penultimate timed event of the rally from Jordan:
“There was a blue drum with a stone sitting on it, right in the middle of the road. I had to brake to pass. »
The frozen image from the camera on board the DS3 of the French crew, then leading the race, is striking. The plastic container is placed in the center of the trajectory between the two rails traced by the cars during the first pass in the Mahes special and a large stone is placed at the same height on the right of the road to form a mini dam.
Sébastien Ogier is forced to brake hard in order to go around the obstacle on the left by putting two wheels off the track. Luckily, he did not puncture, hit or lose control of his Citroën DS3. After letting out an expletive, the Haut Alpin pilot regains his concentration and, above all, his speed.
This heavy braking in the middle of a straight line certainly cost him a handful of tenths of a second. At the finish of this special, he lost command of the rally by half a second to Jari-Matti Latvala. He then had to push hard in the next time trial, the last, to dislodge the Finn from first place. He managed it for two tenths of a second.
It is impossible to say that the can was placed by a supporter of the Ford driver in order to encourage his recovery or by a local disturbed by the passage of the rally in an area crossed by herds of sheep and goats. But Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia still almost lost the rally following this unfortunate incident...

Discover in your AUTOhebdo magazine, on newsstands tomorrow, the analysis of this Jordan Rally full of suspense.