Citroen and Ford shake up the order

Saturday’s final day of the Jordan Rally got off to a tactical start, with the factory Citroen and Ford teams both orchestrating a series of deliberate penalties to give their lead drivers the best chance of victory.

The tactical manoeuvring actually started on Friday, when Sebastien Ogier had intended to drop behind Jari-Matti Latvala in an effort to cancel out any advantage the Ford driver might gain by running further down the order on Saturday.

However, a delay receiving the target split time on the final stage of the day meant Ogier miscalculated how much he should slow down by.

This morning, Ogier checked-in five minutes LATE to the pre-stage service, incurring a 50 second time penalty and dropping to fifth in the start order.

Ford reacted, checking Mikko Hirvonen EARLY out of service (by nine minutes) and into the SS14 start control (by six minutes), to slot him ahead of team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala in the running order.

In a final move, Ogier checked-in EARLY at the start of SS14 (by eight minutes) jumping ahead of all the drivers and saving Sebastien Loeb from running first on the road by sacrificing his own position in the top five.

Driver comments at the stage end were mixed.

"I have no comment to make," said Ogier.

"I don’t like it, but this is part of the game," said Hirvonen.

"We’re on the limit of the regulations," added Loeb.

On the stage, Loeb was fastest to extend his rally lead to 28.1sec. Latvala set the second fastest time, 0.4sec adrift of Loeb’s.

Third on the stage was Petter Solberg - who after Ogier’s deliberate penalty was up to third place overall.