Rally Guanajuato , Mexico was the first gravel outing of the season, with the top drivers fighting for the dominance, already set by Ogier ...
Rally Guanajuato, Mexico was the first gravel outing of the season, with the top drivers fighting for the dominance, already set by Ogier after Sweden.
The Qualifying Stage was won by Mikko Hirvonen who went out fastest and took the last start position of the WRC cars. Also on the same day were two small special stages [spectator friendly mostly], first the famous Monster Street Stage Guanajuato, and later a proper Spectator Special stage, Parque Bicentenario [SS2] where two cars started over a parallel/crossover track.
Thursday - Day 1After a quick ceremonial start, the shorter tarmac stages were run around the Historic city of Guanajuato. It was Thierry Neuville in his Ford Fiesta M-Sport WRC went fastest in SS1, and on SS2, Sebastien Ogier finished the day in his favour with his VW Polo R WRC car with a tiny advantage of 0.3s over Mads Ostberg.
Friday - Day 2
Day 2 - was the biggest challenge in the entire rally as it had 11 special stages to finish, all inclusive of the two short special stages and the city based ultra short stage in the account. With a total of 160.75 km over the SS's, and the surface from dusty gravel to cobble-stone-concrete-mix paved roads.Norwegian Mads Ostberg managed to drive up the leaderboard on SS4 & SS5, only to succumb later to pressure by the Frenchman. Later on, Ogier went from strength-to-strength to widen the gap to 33 secs by the end of Leg 2, to start ahead of the crowd on Day 3/Leg 3.
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| Latvala's damaged VW Polo R WRC |
On the successive day, the proper rally started, early morning but it turned out unlucky for Latvala, who damaged his car's suspension / lower-wishbone after hitting a stone just about 500 meters from the start of SS2. Retiring from the rally, frustrated Jari/Miika could only to restart tomorrow.
With, Latvala out, the pressure eased a bit with the other drivers, but it was the Qatar M-Sport WRT driver, Evgeny Novikov who suffered a huge set-back after his Ford Fiesta RS WRC popped up alternator issues and loosing more than 12 minutes to fix it by himself, but still in the rally.
By the end of Day 2 [Friday], it is VW Polo R WRC driver Sebastien Ogier who leads the rally with a good 33 secs ahead of Qatar M-Sport WRT driver Mads Ostberg, and Mikko Hirvonen in his Citroen DS3 WRC who closed into the third overall.
It was the local hero, Benito Guerra in the privateer seat of Citroen DS3 WRC, who was the obvious choice of the locals to cheer their home-grown talent in the top sport. He finished the day in overall 8th, ahead of the much experienced Martin Prokop [ Ford Fiesta RS WRC] and Australian driver Chris Atkinson in Khalid Al-Qassimi's Citroen DS3 WRC car.
Saturday - Day 3
At the beginning of Day 2, Sebastien Ogier was virtually unbeatable with a gap of 3m32.4s ahead of second placed Mikko Hirvonen, unless the Frenchman encounters any problems with the car or alike. Ogier encountered a strange issue, with a gate closed in one of the stage, where he lost more than 30 seconds when his co-driver Julien Ingrassia had to get off the car and open the gate. But that didn't stop the fastest driver from loosing his place, where also organisers evaluated the GPS data and took off 40 seconds over the gate issue.
Qatar M-Sport WRT's no.1 driver Mads Ostberg had to retire in the second stage on Friday after his Ford Fiesta RS WRC car alternator generated some issues, which eventually lead to flat battery. Thierry Neuville [like Mikko], encashed on Mads disappointing retirement and settled on third overall, who was also supported by team boss Malcom Wilsoni since he was the one on the top of the charts for the team.
There was a shuffle-up in the lower point-scoring order too, Dani Sordo now sits in 4th, while Nasser Al-Attiyah moving up to 5th overall. Ken Block, Chris Atkinson, Guerra, Martin Prokop and Evgeny Novikov are the finishing top ten in descending order respectively.
If one noticed properly, Nasser had a very anxious moment after he slipped off the road and drove down the rutty mountain surface, Dakar style! Very lucky to regain road, indeed !! Watch exclusive footage of Nasser here below.
Sunday - Final Day
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| Ogier after SS21 |
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| Final service at VW Motorsports |
After a thrilling fight for the top three podium positions from past three days, finally the third round of WRC, Rally Mexico, Sebastien Ogier took the top step with a good 3m26.8s advantage.
The final day of rally ended with the last three stages, with the opening stage, SS21 [Guanajuatito], being the biggest of the entire rally of 54.85 km. Mikko Hirvonen in his Citroen DS3 WRC went on to set a blistering pace to win the stage and secure his second spot safe and secure off the charging Thierry Neuville with his Qatar WRT Ford Fiesta RS WRC.
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| Charging Mikko! |
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| Ken Block around a corner.. |
After a final quick service, SS22 [Derramadero] the Power Stage - 21.14 km, was won by the rally leader himself and took the extra bonus points to his kitty account, that could count into vital at the end of the championship. Mads Ostberg, despite his best efforts managed a second fastest finish, satisfying himself with 2 points and the ill-fated Jari Matti-Latvala took the last single point for this round of this rally, and finished out of the normal point scoring top ten overall.
The final stage was a spectator special, with is double the distance of the what we had witnessed in the past two days.
In the WRC 2, middle-east driver Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari won the event over Nicholas Fuchs with a gap of 9m24.6s, while Ricardo Trivino finished the event in third place 17m34.2s to the winner.
Next event in about a month from now on 21st of March, 2013 at Vodafone Rally de Portugal.
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