The 2011 WRC Rally season continued with a very exciting battle at Rally Jordan, resulting in the closest finish of all-time. Sebastien Ogier took a risk on Friday that ended up paying off, as he took the victory by just .2 seconds total over Jari-Matti Latvala in Ford Fiesta WRC. With all the other top 3 (Jari-Matti Latvala, Sebastien Loeb, and Petter Solberg) backing off and playing tactics as to not have to go out first and sweep on the final day of competition, Ogier pushed even harder and built a 30 second advantage. Ogier had to push hard on the final day and even lost the lead to Latvala on the second to last stage, but Ogier was the fastest in the penultimate power stage and claimed the win by the narrowest of margins. “Incredible,” said Ogier. “An incredible day. I had to push like hell today. It’s an amazing feeling. Jari-Matti was so fast today and I had to drive flat out. I’m so happy to end like this.” The victory in Jordan puts Ogier back in the drivers championship hunt where he sits in 3rd, just 5 points behind teammate Loeb.
Latavala was a bit disappointed losing on the final stage, but was still pleased with his finish. “Somebody wins the rally, someone has to lose,” Latvala said. “It’s the same situation as last year in New Zealand when I won and Sebastien [Ogier] lost it by fractions of a second. I can’t deny that I’m disappointed. It was so close, we were 0.5 seconds ahead going into the final stage. We were absolutely on the limit – we all were, you can tell because the four of us were 0.7 seconds apart on the Power Stage. It’s difficult to say where I would improve – there were a couple of places where I was a little bit wide but I think it’s like that for everybody. At that speed, sometimes when you try so hard you do little mistakes. You need to do a perfect performance and today was not my perfect performance.” Latvala is still in the mix of things with a shot at the championship just, sitting in 4th, 8 points out of 1st.
Sebastien Loeb’s 3rd place finish was enough to vault him ahead of Mikko Hirvonen to the lead in the driver’s championship standings. Loeb seemed content to settle for his 3rd place finish after pushing Latvala early on, but couldn’t keep up the pace as he suffered from oversteer issues all day on Saturday. Loeb said of the issues with his Citroen DS3 on Saturday, “When it’s slow, we’re slow; when it’s quick, we’re quick. I don’t know if it’s the set-up of the car.”
Petter Solberg was also right in the mix and very hopeful that he could steal away the victory, but it wasn’t meant to be. On SS17 Petter had an off and was not able to get his Citroen going again. “About two kilometres into the stage, we had a major spin and just went off the road and got stuck,” said Solberg. “There were some really big rocks there, and we were not able to get the car back on the stage and continue.” The retirement will make it very difficult for Solberg’s goal of winning the driver’s championship as a privateer this year. This may be Solberg’s last year as a Citroen privateer as rumors of Solberg joining the soon to be announced VW WRC entry have been swirling for some time.
Mikko Hirvonen struggled early on, but finished strong taking 4th place and grabbed 2 bonus points with his finish on the power stage putting him just 2 points behind Loeb for the driver’s championship. “I’m a little bit disappointed with the overall result because yesterday I struggled, but today was better,” said Hirvonen.
Matthew Wilson had another impressive showing in his Stobart Ford Fiesta WRC finishing 5th for the 2nd consecutive time. Wilson started the final day sitting in 7th behind Kimi Raikkonen, but pushed hard and closed the gap on Kimi all day. Kimi then suffered a puncture on penultimate stage which allowed Wilson to take over the 5th spot. “We changed the car a little bit on the first day as we adapted to the new tyres,” Wilson said. “We’re still learning about them. We were a bit disappointed with the long stage on day one – I made a couple of little mistakes but nothing massive – and we really wanted to push on and get the position back. It was fun to race against [Kimi] Raikkonen.”
Raikkonen was still able to finish in an impressive sixth place, despite the puncture on the Power Stage. Rumors are swirling around Raikkonen as well, as he is rumored to be arranging to compete in the Nascar Camping World Truck Series with the Kurt Busch team. Negotiations have begun for at least one race in the Nascar series.
The WRC season continues May 5-8 at Rally d’Italia Sardegna. Visit wrc.com for full coverage.
