Friday, January 17, 2014

Ogier Leads Rallye Monte-Carlo

Defending World Rally champion Sébastien Ogier won three of five stages on day two of Rallye Monte-Carlo and now finds himself leading overall.

Ogier leads leads fellow Frenchman, M-Sport Ford driver Bryan Bouffier by 51.1 seconds. Ogier won his three stages by a cumulative 45.9 seconds. Bouffier was leading entering the day and won stage eight by 0.2 seconds over Ogier. Citroën's Kris Meeke is third, 1 minute and 38.6 seconds back. The Northern Irish driver had two thirds and three fourths on the day. Meeke's Citroën teammate Mads Østberg is fourth, 2 minutes and 48.9 seconds back and finished second on stage nine to Ogier.

Jari-Matti Latvala won stage eleven by 3.9 seconds over his Volkswagen teammate Ogier and is fifth overall, 6 minutes and 4.4 seconds back. Elfyn Evans is sixth, 10.1 seconds back of Latvala and nearly thirty seconds ahead of his M-Sport teammate Mikko Hirvonen.

The noticeable retirement of the day was Robert Kubica who had an accident on stage nine. Kubica won the first two stages before dropping to third at the end of day one. He finished fourth and third on the first two stages of the day and was fourth overall, just over a minute back of his teammate Bouffier. Kubica had won the first round of the 2014 European Rally Championship, International Jänner Rallye in Austria earlier this month.

The final day of the 2014 Rallye Monte-Carlo will feature four stages with the first taking place at 8:48 a.m. ET.