WRC – Sébastien Loeb beats the Volkswagens in Argentina

Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena achieve their 78th victory in WRC and their eighth consecutive success at Rally of Argentina as they competed in their last event on gravel. The Citroën driver calmly managed his lead after his rival Sébastien Ogier made a mistake in the second stage, losing half a minute in the adventure as well as the lead of the event. “I am very happy to win this rally, especially since it is practically my last. I'm almost undefeated here and it's a real pleasure for us.", comments the winner who will return one last time for the Rallye de France-Alsace.

Sébastien Ogier did not want to take any risks and was content with second place accompanied by two bonus points from the Power Stage. The Volkswagen driver remains with an excellent result since he leads the Championship with 122 points on the clock and his direct rival is none other than Sébastien Loeb who has 68 points after missing the last two events. The leader in the Drivers' standings remains frustrated by the problems encountered with his Polo R WRC. “It’s still a good result. We had some problems and we are already happy to be at the finish. We are still in the learning phase and I am quite satisfied with the situation after five rallies. We still have work to do, but this will be resolved quickly. We had some small problems again this morning and we ended up with a car that was not very good. »

Jari-Matti Latvala was imperial during the final stage of the Rally Argentina. The Volkswagen driver livened up the last day by gradually coming back to Evgeny Novikov who could not resist the Finn's return. By winning the day's four special stages, the Volkswagen driver also earned three points in the Power Stage. His Russian rival tried everything, even spinning on the last course. Thierry Neuville secures another top five after adopting a cautious approach and benefiting from his opponents' problems. Mikko Hirvonen saves a sixth place after having lost all hope of a good result following his engine failures the day before and takes the last point of the bonus special. The Citroën driver is almost five minutes ahead of Mads Ostberg who saw his weekend destroyed from the start by a broken steering arm. Andreas Mikkelsen snatches eighth place from Dani Sordo by only two tenths ahead. Martin Prokop completes the top ten. In WRC2, Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari (on Fiesta RRC) won an undisputed victory with a 13-minute lead over the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX of Nicholas Fuchs.

Discover the analysis of the Rally Argentina carried out by our special correspondents in the next issue of AUTOhebdo, available exceptionally from Monday in digital version on all platforms, and from Tuesday on newsstands.