SS12: Drama for Ostberg

Mads Ostberg’s grip on second place hung by a thread after the Norwegian emerged from this morning’s opening 30.33km Ibarrilla test (SS12) with broken suspension at the rear of his Citroen DS3.

Ostberg, who restarted with a 16.4sec advantage over Jari-Matti Latvala, swiped a bank near the end. Although he dropped only a fraction over 10sec, the rear upright was broken.

“Too fast into a corner, slid wide and hit a bank on the outside. It was a heavy impact,” said Ostberg.

He pulled up beyond the finish control and he and co-driver Jonas Andersson worked hard on the car, taking advice from team engineers in the León service park via telephone.

They tied up the suspension with three ratchet straps and many cable ties before finally heading off to the 53.69km Otates test. Asked if he thought the repairs would work, a fighting Ostberg said: “Of course. It’s a Viking fix!”

The time gaps on the leaderboard are quite large so if he could get through Otates with a loss of even three or four minutes it wouldn’t be a disaster.

Volkswagen completed a sweep of the top three stage times – the 14th occasion they have achieved this since they entered WRC last season. Sébastien Ogier was fastest by 4.5sec from Jari-Matti Latvala with Andreas Mikkelsen, returning under Rally 2 rules and benefiting from cleaner road conditions behind the frontrunners, was third.