The second team of the Korean group got the second victory of the season — as opposed to their «senior» colleagues of the factory team. Strategists at Hyundai Motorsport once again guessed wrong with the composition, seated behind the wheel of the third rider of the car, which has managed to win a stage of the World Rally Championship.
Well, who could have imagined that Thierry Neuville — the worst of the three points on the factory team pilots — hold almost perfect rally and win a landslide victory?
However, the Belgian's victory rejoiced both Hyundai team — after the division in their purely conventional.
Neville won nine special stages of 19 and another three showed the second time. But his main rivals frankly failed — Thierry brilliantly took advantage of this situation.
According to tradition emerged in recent years, in the group of leaders of the race from the start were all three Volkswagen Motorsport rider. However, that Sebastien Ogier that Jari-Matti Latvala, Andreas Mikkelsen conducted the Italian stage, as they say, very badly.
For Ogier Rally Sardinia became a regular race in which he had to clear the track, losing a lot of time on this. The outcome of the Italian Rally for the Frenchman was only in third place, more than one and a half minutes behind the race winner.
But if Sebastien is not lucky, the team's flag should have been to pick up his comrades-in-arms? In theory yes, but in practice, something went wrong.
Mikkelsen spent the race is very uneven. Norwegian alternated in the top three results from the finish in the second half dozens and abroad. At the same time for all the rally Andreas has not won a special stage.
Moreover, on the second day, the third Volkswagen Motorsport driver made a mistake, went off the road and its Polo R WRC hit a stone. The result of the incident was the damaged suspension and gathering.
Andreas returned to the race on Sunday, but a hit in the glasses he no longer had to dream about — he took only 13th place, which was even pleased. This result led to the fact that Mikkelsen from the second position in the individual competition dropped to third.
This means that the next stage in Poland, he will go on the road is not the second, and the third — it will facilitate his task and will give an advantage over those who used it starts.
Unlike Ogier and Mikkelsen, Jari-Matti Latvala led the real fight with Thierry Neuville for the victory. But he was unable to get ahead of the Belgian.
The fate of the race decided yet on the seventh special stage — up to this point on each special stage rally leader changed, but after Cy7 led the Rally of Sardinia Neville has suffered no man to come close.
Latvala also gradually lagged farther and farther. At the end of three days of the race the Finn finished second 25 seconds behind the winner.
The fourth stage of the finished item Italian Dani Sordo. This allowed the Hyundai Motorsport rider to reach second place in the individual competition of the championship.
Closed the top five best of Ford — it was the «owner-driver» Ott Tyanak, speaking on DMACK WRT team car. Only after it finished a pilot factory team M-Sport Eric Camilli.
For the French race was extremely successful. In addition to the quite good result — and this is under constant technical problems during the rally — and he still won the first career victory in the special stage stage of the World Rally Championship. His mate Mads Ostberg team was not able to reach the finish line due to a fault.
The seventh place finish Rally of Sardinia — the main optimist world rally Henning Solberg. Norwegian rides for fun and sometimes it seems that he was quite satisfied with any result.
The last three places in the top ten at the finish of the Rally Sardinia took the winner and prize-WRC standings 2.
Eighth place — and win WRC 2 — talent won the Finnish Teemu Suning County. In the bitter struggle he snatched first place from the representative of the factory team Skoda of Jan Kopecky. Third in the standings (and tenth in the absolute classification) finished the rally Estonian Karl Kruuda.
During the race on the special stages wins — besides Thierry Neuville, Jari-Matti Latvala, Sébastien Ogier and Eric Camilli — said Mads Ostberg, Kevin Abbring and Ott Tyanak.
And after the finish broke a real scandal. Technical commissioners found that the car race winner Thierry Neuville does not match the homologation form. Glass doors in the back of his Hyundai i20 WRC proved to be thinner and lighter than those that were listed in the homologation documents.
During the trial it became known that such glasses are absolutely all the riders Korean team performed at all stages of the season. For such sin in his time was disqualified racers factory team Ford...
But, for some inexplicable reason, the Korean team got off, in fact, with slight shock — she was awarded only by a fine of 50 thousand euros, without any more sanctions and withdrawal points.
The incident with glasses Hyundai cars left in the shadow of another scandalous situation. Martin Prokop, is not the first speaker in the World Rally Championship as a «private traders», even received a five-minute penalty before the start of the race. The judges felt that his mechanics have broken the seal on the transmission, which the Czech used in his car during one of the previous stages.
Prokop was incredibly disappointed and did not hide his indignation. However, to do anything during the race with this situation, Martin could not and had to gather strength and to drive the Rally Sardinia. At the finish it was the 11th — in half a minute from getting into the points zone.
And after the race the Czech rally driver stated that he was leaving the World Rally Championship, and will prepare for the rally-raid «Dakar». No, Prokop care not inflict significant damage to the series, but «private traders» in the current WRC and so is almost gone, so each of them is literally gold. And now in their championship was more one less...
The next stage of the World Rally Championship will be held from 1 to 3 July in Poland.
Photo: wrc.com
