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The leader of the 93rd Rallye Monte-Carlo, Sébastien Ogier (Toyota), aiming at an historic 10th win in the Principality, set the fastest time on SS16 (between Avançon and Notre-Dame-du-Laus, 13.97km) very early on Sunday morning. But he’s not out of the woods yet, as there are still two stages to go for his rivals too, with different tyre choices. As for Ott Tänak (Hyundai), following on from Saturday (4 scratch times out of 6), he started the day by taking 3rd place overall standings, behind the two Toyotas of Ogier and Elfyn Evans.
‘I’m really happy that this stage is behind me, because it was very slippery and very tricky,’ said a very relieved Ogier at the end of the stage. ‘I set the fastest time, but we all chose different tyres, so it’s quite possible that I’ll lose time on the next one,’ added the eight-time world champion, after increasing his lead over Evans by four seconds over 14 km, up to 24.3 seconds.
It was 6.45 am and pitch dark when the first car set off on SS16, the Ford Puma of Grégoire Munster, and a few minutes later two Toyotas were out of the race. Takamoto Katsuta at first, not very fast, in a right-hand bend, and Sami Pajari’s a bit later, much more spectacularly, at the entrance of a small bridge. In other words, two cars out of the race, and crews OK, on the very first timed kilometres of the last day, giving a welcome double warning to the four candidates for podium: Ogier, Evans, Tänak and Adrien Fourmaux, i.e. two Toyota drivers and two Hyundai drivers.
This 16th stage, the first on the way back to Monaco, had already been covered on Thursday evening before arriving in Gap. The conditions were very different, with many excited fans who had annoyed Ogier a little with their smoke bombs and fireworks. The atmosphere was a little less festive this morning at daybreak, and the Frenchman didn’t mind. Having set off from Gap with 4 studded tyres and two super-soft, just like Evans, he had no assurance that this was the right choice to finish the 51km loop on Sunday’s menu, including the closing Power Stage (SS18). After all, the snow at the top of Col de Turini was likely to melt quite quickly…
In WRC2, there is much less suspense, as Yohan Rossel (Citroën C3) is on a different planet, with a lead of over three minutes on Eric Camilli (Hyundai i20) and Léo Rossel (Citroën C3), still battling for 2nd place.
