Gearbox woes for Magalhães in Ypres

Bruno Magalhães’ hopes of extending his points-scoring run in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge to six events suffered a blow when a gearbox problem led to him picking up two separate time penalties.

He was two minutes late leaving Friday’s final service while his Peugeot Sport Portugal mechanics fitted a new gearbox. Unfortunately, the replacement unit failed on route to overnight parc ferme, which forced his team to reinstall the original gearbox.

With only 10 minutes of service time available in Saturday’s first service, the Portuguese driver left five minutes behind schedule, which means he has incurred a total of 1m10s in penalties.

However, due to the spate of retirements this morning, Magalhães has climbed to eighth overall after eight stages