The World Rally Championship in Croatia ended with the victory of Sebastien Ogier. Toyota’s double victory was secured by Elfyn Evans, who, however, was unable to catch Thierry Neuville’s World Championship points lead.
15:23•Updated 15:32
Eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier drove to win the World Rally Championship in Croatia at the end of a colorful Sunday. Ogier’s teammate Elfyn Evans drove second, almost ten seconds slower than the Frenchman, and fell into a driving error on Sunday Thierry Neuville was third.
For Ogier, the win was the 59th of his career.
– I am happy with that number. We knew it would be a challenging weekend. I’ve probably never had so many situations in one rally, Ogier said in the finish interview.
– It’s nice to see that we still have some momentum, 40-year-old Ogier smiled with a grin on his face.
Ogier also took the biggest World Cup points from the Croatian rally. He got 21 MM points, the fourth driver Ott Tänak 20 points, Evans and Neuville 19.
Below you can see the overall results of the World Rally Championship in Croatia.
1. Sebastien Ogier 13+5+3=21
2. Ott Tänak 10+6+4=20
3. Elfyn Evans 15+3+1=19
3. Thierry Neuville 18+1+0=19
5. Takamoto Katsuta 6+7+2=15
6. Adrien Fourmaux 8+0+5=13
7. Andreas Mikkelsen’s 4+4+0=8
8. Gregoire Munster 3+2+0=5
9. Nikolai Grjaz’s 2+0+0=2
10. Yohan Rossel 1+0+0=1
Sunday offered drama
Sunday’s second special test saw the rally’s first really painful setbacks. Adrien Fourmaux, Evans and Neuville fell into driving mistakes and messed up their own paces. Fourmaux hit the cutting barrier and broke his car, but was finally able to continue after about a quarter of an hour of repairs.
Evans slipped the corner a little long, hit the bank and spun. The car remained intact, but Evans lost time and fell more than 20 seconds behind the teammate who led Sunday’s sprint day Takamoto from Katsuta.
Neuville was worse than his race partner, who drove the left-hand corner to long, hit a bush and wrecked his car so much that he only had to wheel to the finish line on Sunday. Thus, the WC points pot, which looked promisingly large, was shortened.
– Today was not the kind of day we wanted. Fortunately, we got points from yesterday, Neuville repeated disappointedly at the finish of the final special test.
The Belgian driver said in the finish interview that the map reader Martijn Wydaeghen the notes came late along the special test, which eventually led to a driving fault.
Fighting for seconds on Friday and Saturday
Neuville started the rally as the first car and tried to take advantage of the starting position on a cleaner road than others. He set the bottom times for the three special stages in the morning, and only Evans broke Neuville’s full series with one of his top times.
In the afternoon, the situation evened out when Neuville experienced a flat tire at the end of EK 6 and lost about ten seconds of time. Evans rose to the top of the rally at the end of the day, tied with Neuville. Sebastien Ogier’s blistering attack on the final stretch of the day lifted him to third by a good six seconds.
The fight for seconds continued throughout Saturday. Neuville finally clocked the bottom time for the five special stages on Saturday, while Evans, Ogier and Fourmaux were able to take one special stage to a man.
The drivers avoided major setbacks for the first two days of driving. The differences remained small and there was a fierce battle for the WC points awarded based on Saturday’s results. Neuville led the rally at the day break on Saturday, but in the opening stretch of the afternoon, Evans took the lead.
Neuville was not startled by this, but took the lead during the afternoon and took 18 MM points for himself. At the end of Saturday, Evans was 4.9 seconds behind the Belgian, and Ogier was third, a good 11 seconds behind the Hyundai driver.