Saturday midday wrap: Ogier holds diminishing lead

Citroen Total World Rally Team’s Sebastien Ogier remains in the lead of the Jordan Rally after four hotly contested stages during the final day.

Running first on the road and suffering all the disadvantages that entails on gravel, Ogier saw his overnight lead of 31.6 seconds cut to 18.9 seconds.

Ogier’s team-mate Sebastien Loeb pushed hard from the off, but it was Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala who moved up into second place after Loeb made a crucial error at a hairpin turn on SS15, the third stage of the day. Loeb missed the corner at a junction where the stage intersected with part of one of yesterday’s stages.

“I missed a stupid hairpin,” said Loeb. “It’s hard to see where to go. Now I have to continue to fight with the others behind.”

After mounting a comeback on the final stage of the morning, which will be re-run this afternoon as the bonus point Power Stage, Loeb now lies in third place - 1.8 seconds behind Latvala. “We have to push to pass second position again,” said Loeb. “This morning was our chance [to push for the win] and we lost it.”

While Loeb seems to be aiming his sights on second place, Latvala still believes he can win, even though time is running out. “I’m starting to be afraid that I’ll run out of kilometres. I really have to push. I can still make it.”

Petter Solberg stayed in touch with the leading trio throughout the morning without looking like making an assault on the lead. He is 8.1 seconds behind Loeb.

Latvala’s team-mate Mikko Hirvonen remains over two minutes behind the lead four, a legacy of running first on the road yesterday. He won two stages this morning but made the tactical decision to go more steadily on SS16 to finesse his pace notes for when the Power Stage runs there at the end of the day.

Former Formula 1 champion Kimi Raikkonen is defending sixth place from an ever-improving Matthew Wilson. The M-Sport Stobart Ford driver lost 7.3 seconds to Raikkonen’s Citroen in SS15 but outpaced the Finn in the other stages to sit 10.3 seconds behind.

The Fiesta RS WRCs of Federico Villagra and Khalid Al Qassimi continue to dispute eighth place. Villagra took the advantage on the first stage of the morning but then reported an oil temperature spike. Al Qassimi dropped over 10 seconds to Villagra over the following stages before beating him over SS16 to bring the gap to 9.3 seconds. Dennis Kuipers rounds out the top 10 in his Ferm Powertools Fiesta.

Runaway SWRC leader Nasser Al-Attiyah had a disastrous start. After reporting a misfire all the way through the rev range yesterday, he found his Fiesta S2000 spluttering away from the start of this morning’s first stage and he halted soon after.

Bernardo Sousa inherited the lead, also driving a Fiesta, but found the going far from easy.

“When I saw Nasser had stopped it threw my concentration off,” he said. “I spun and then I made more mistakes later in the stage. I haven’t had a great morning.”

Sousa’s nearest competitor, the Skoda Fabia S2000 of Karl Kruuda, is 38.8 seconds in arrears.

Overall standings after SS16: