Sébastien Loeb flies away, Ogier abandons

He won five out of six stages today, bringing his total to eight out of 10 since the start yesterday. Needless to say, the Alsatian is heading straight for his sixth victory at Monte-Carlo. Today, despite a lead over the competition of more than a minute this morning, Sébastien Loeb continued to do what was necessary, without overdoing it. As a result, tomorrow he will have a lead of 1:37:2 over Dani Sordo at the start of SS11. Dani Sordo who spits in his gloves, since he has been scrambling from the start with Petter Solberg, who seems to have acclimatized perfectly to driving his Ford Fiesta RS WRC. This evening, only 3??7 separate the Spaniard from the Norwegian. The fight for second place will be the main point of interest at the end of this season. rally, even if this very atypical test can hold some big surprises. Jari-Matti Latvala learned this the hard way yesterday, and Sébastien Ogier also had the bitter experience this evening.

From the start, Ogier attacked relentlessly at the wheel of his Fabia S2000, and enjoyed the luxury of tickling the WRCs, fighting for the Top 5 in the general classification. Alas, the Gapençais and his co-driver Julien Ingrassia went off the road in SS10 (see video), the last special of the day. Given the condition of the Skoda, it could very well be that their beautiful journey ends here. The crew fortunately escaped unscathed. But it would certainly have been interesting to see what this could have done to the final ranking, especially if the weather were to turn bad.

At the bottom of the top three we find Mikko Hirvonen, who is struggling to find the instructions for his DS3 WRC. The Finn is unable to upset the established order, unable to keep up with the pace of the drivers in front of him. He will even have to be wary of a possible return from Evgenly Novikov, who is only 11 seconds behind. Sixth, François Delecour did very well at the wheel of his Ford Fiesta WRC. He is 1:29 ahead of another Frenchman, Pierre Campana, who defends the official colors of Mini.

Tomorrow, three stages are on the program. It will all start at 10:02 a.m. with SS11, a 23,28 km special which will take the competitors from St Jean en Royans to Font d'Urle.

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