Toyota pilot Sebastien Ogier leads the rally Italy in Sardinia, the sixth run to the Rallye World Cup (WRC) 2025, after Friday. After that, however, it hadn’t looked for a long time, because Hyundai drivers were at the top over long distances. Adrien Fourmaux, Ott Tänak and Thierry Neuville were even closed in places one to three.
But after Neuville left after an accident during the fifth special test and Fourmaux and Tänak lost decisive seconds at the end of the day, Ogier conquered position one. The eight -time world champion goes with a lead of 2.1 seconds to Fourmaux into Saturday, Tänak rank third with 7.3 seconds.
In places four to seven follow four Toyota pilots with Sami Pajari, Kalle Rovanperä, the World Cup leading Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta. Eighth is Nikolai Gryasin (Skoda), who also leads the WRC2 classification. With Emil Lindholm (Skoda) and Oliver Solberg (Toyota), two other drivers from the WRC2 complete the top 10.
After Ogier won the first exam at the beginning of the day, Hyundai then took the command. Neuville and Fourmaux initially switched to the top before the pendulum swung towards Toyota from the fifth test.
At first, Neuville was eliminated. After a jump, he struck his car on a wall and damaged the left rear wheel suspension. A onward journey was impossible. During the sixth examination, Fourmaux and Tänak were 6.7 and 10.7 seconds slower than the Ogiers and gave the lead out of their hands.
The same special test as Neuville was also doomed. The Japanese overturned. Spectators turned the Gr Yaris on the bikes again, after a short review Katsuta continued the journey with the demolished racing car. However, he lost a good two and a half minutes to the finish line.
Italy rally: Complete debacle for M-Sport
For M-Sport, the rally Italy developed early on into a nightmare: three Ford Puma Rally1 vehicles fell on the second special stage-a bitter setback for the team of team boss Richard Millener.
On the fast and narrow exam, it first caught Gregoire Munster and Josh Mcerlean, each collided with a rock. Munster destroyed the right, Mcerlean the left rear wheel suspension of his car – in both cases it was out of the question.
The accident of teammate Martin’s Sesks was even more dramatic: after a jump, the Lette lost control of his vehicle, which overturned at high speed. Fortunately, sesks and co -driver Renars Francis were not injured.
“I wouldn’t say it was bad, but it’s just disappointing,” said team boss Millener. “It is not unexpected – the boys want to develop further. Sometimes you have to experience such a setback to learn from it. They knew that they couldn’t do it that way, but now it has happened and they will learn from it.”
According to Millener, two of the three vehicles could start again on Saturday: “I think two of the three [Autos] could be okay. To be honest, I am not very confident about Martins – many expensive parts have been damaged. And with the brutal calendar with rally every two weeks, you have to think economically. “
An immediate reconstruction for the restart would be expensive – and not necessarily sensible: “We could spend a lot of money to return, but what would we achieve if we have to be the first for two days? There is not much to win. In addition, we would have to make all repairs that we do here again in the UK to make sure that everything is perfect.”
After a technical test on site, whether M-Sport will go into the race again on Saturday. But it is clear that the hopes of a strong team result in Portugal broke up early.
On Saturday at Rallye Italy, two loops A three marking tests are on the program over a distance of a total of 121.6 kilometers.