SS2: Slippery conditions hand advantage to early starters

This new stage in the Eifel hills lies close to the Belgian border. It climbed or descended throughout with plenty of hairpin bends as it darted in and out of the trees.

First in the running order was the place to be in Waxweiler as mud and dirt dragged onto the roads made it impossible for those further down to match the pace of the early starters through the second stage of ADAC Rallye Deutschland.

Sébastien Ogier took full advantage to set fastest time by 1.7sec from Volkswagen team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala to extend his lead to 2.1sec.

“It was damp and I attacked a bit less than the first stage, but I was more consistent. Perhaps I tried a bit too hard in the first one,” said the Frenchman.

Even though Latvala was immediately behind Ogier in the order, the deteriorating conditions were apparent by the mud caked on the Finn’s Polo R.

“It’s getting quite dirty. There’s quite a lot of mud at the beginning and that’s where we lost time. For the rest of the stage we matched the speed of Seb,” he said.

Kris Meeke was third in his Citroen DS3, and summed up the conditions for the later starters. “It was full mud for the first three-quarters of the stage,” said the Northern Irishman, who was almost 10sec slower than Ogier.

Andreas Mikkelsen reported understeer issues in his Polo R, while Martin Prokop admitted he could not settle into a rhythm in his Ford Fiesta RS, but was confused as to whether that was due to the conditions or the tricky roads.