The Citroën Total World Rally Team crew of Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia claimed their third world rally victory today when they won Rally de Portugal for the second consecutive year. Team-mates Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena finished second with Jari-Matti Latvala and Miikka Anttila third for the Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team.
In the FIA World Rally Championship, both Mikko Hirvonen and Loeb have 58 points after three rounds of the series, although Hirvonen will lead the contenders into the following round according to the regulations. Latvala and Ogier follow in third and fourth positions respectively. In the Manufacturers’ Championship, Ford Abu Dhabi heads the Citroën Total World Rally Team by 10 points.
Today’s route took in two loops of two stages, although with 104.86 competitive kilometres to complete there was no cruise to the finish. In addition, with extra Championship points on offer in the final 31.04 kilometre Power Stage, the crews still had everything to fight for. Loeb claimed victory in this stage to add an additional three points to his tally, while Latvala and Ogier claimed two and one point respectively for finishing second and third in this single stage.
The leading trio have run without problems today, and Mikko Hirvonen managed to climb into fourth after the opening stage this morning. However the Finn then lost time and dropped a position with a broken drive-shaft. In the repeat loop of stages, he once again climbed to fourth but was lucky to maintain position after he broke a damper on the Fiesta RS WRC in the final stage.
Behind Matthew Wilson in fifth, Petter Solberg finished sixth, having climbed back from 20th on Friday after a succession of punctures. Kimi Räikkönen lost out to Solberg in the final stage, but still finished a solid seventh. Henning Solberg, in eighth, lost more time today with turbo problems, but managed to finish ninth.
The fourth round of the FIA World Rally Championship takes the crews to Rally Jordan (14-16 April).
SUBSCRIBE BELOW TO READ THE FULL STORY
