Epic battle in prospect

The final day of the Jordan Rally promises to be another epic with less than 30 seconds covering the top three pilots after Friday’s six special stages.

Sebastien Loeb, the defending world champion, holds a 24.6-second advantage over Citroen Junior Team driver Sebastien Ogier following a determined showing in the Middle East.

But with Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala a mere 3.1 seconds adrift of Ogier and strongly placed to attack Loeb due to his more favourable road position, there’s plenty still to play for on the third round of the world championship.

However, Mikko Hirvonen won’t be in the thick of the battle tomorrow following his crash on the opening stage of the day, which left his Ford Focus with damaged suspension and forced him to retire. He plans to restart on Saturday under SupeRally regulations.

“It has been a good day for me,” said Loeb. “Each time in the long stage I got a very good time and that was the difference I could make today. I tried to attack because I didn’t like to use strategy. Maybe it could have been better for me to be just behind him, I don’t know. But we are in the lead and I will try to push hard to keep the gap tomorrow but I know it won’t be easy.”

Loeb started the day 31.8s adrift of Latvala. But with the young Finn having to carve a line through the loose surface gravel by running first on the road, Loeb had little difficulty making inroads into Latvala’s advantage.

“In the morning the grip level was consistent but in the afternoon the grip level was different in lots of places and it was hard to keep the car in the right line so I lost a lot of time,” said Latvala. “I actually thought Citroen would play tactics and be as close to me as possible so I am surprised Loeb is in the front. We need to keep the pressure on now because the two drivers ahead of me will clean the road but it will be difficult for sure.”

Ogier had intended to drop behind 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 he miscalculated how much he should slow down by.

“I wanted to respect the plan but there was a communication problem from the team and I received the split time four seconds after I finished the stage,” said Ogier. “We should have been behind Latvala but what can we do now?”

Petter Solberg is fourth overnight but was unhappy at the amount of time he lost on the two Jordan River stages. “The suspension was too hard in the morning so we made it softer for the second run but still we lost time. I don’t know why because we were fast on every other stage. We have a very good starting position for tomorrow but we need to get rid of the oversteer if we are going to do anything.”

Dani Sordo reported the rear of his Citroen C4 was sliding around too much on the Jordan River stages and also conceded that it was vital he finished the rally following his retirement in Mexico last month and in light of Hirvonen’s crash.

Matthew Wilson overcame a build up of dust in his Focus and a loss of brakes on the last Jordan River test to hold sixth overnight with Federico Villagra seventh and Kimi Raikkonen eighth, following a spin on the final stage.