Sebastien Ogier scores Rally Poland victory

Sébastien Ogier repelled team-mate Andreas Mikkelsen’s fierce challenge to secure his second consecutive Rally Poland victory and net his fifth World Rally Championship success in seven rounds.

The Frenchman won by 11.9s after almost 300km of super-fast action in north-east Poland, leaving his Volkswagen team-mate still searching for his maiden victory.

Ott Tänak equalled his career-best result in third after Jari-Matti Latvala crashed in the final speed test.

Ogier’s victory was achieved the hard way.

As road opener for the first two legs, he was disadvantaged by cleaning gravel from the sandy tracks for most of the rally and had Mikkelsen breathing down his neck from the moment he took the lead on Friday afternoon.

The Polo R duo were split by 2.1s after the opening leg, Ogier had squeezed his advantage out to 5.6s by last night and completed victory with a flourish by claiming maximum bonus points for winning the final live TV Power Stage.

Warm conditions saw the thermometer top 33c and tyre choice became decisive.

Mikkelsen’s decision to opt for hard compounds on Saturday afternoon gave him the best opportunity to overhaul Ogier, who chose softer rubber, but the Norwegian has hampered by hanging dust.

“This year I’ve had many great wins, but this one is very special,” said Ogier.

“For 90 percent of the rally I opened the road so this is amazing. I had to push from the first metre to the last. I have a small break now and this is the perfect start to my holiday.”

Tänak, who led briefly on Friday afternoon, and Jari-Matti Latvala fought tooth and nail for the final podium place.

They started the last stage separated by 1.1s but the Estonian secured third in a Ford Fiesta RS when Latvala hit a tree with a handful of kilometres left.

The impact broke the radiator on his Polo R and he worked furiously on the liaison section after the stage to make repairs to ensure he could drive to the finish.

However a 40s penalty for checking in late dropped him to fifth.

The beneficiary was Hayden Paddon, who followed his stellar performance in Italy last month with another great drive to finish fourth in a Hyundai i20.

He headed Latvala by 10.1s with team-mate Thierry Neuville completing the top six 19.8sec further back.

“To come away with a top five result is very pleasing to follow on from what we did in Sardinia, and while I’m sorry for Jari-Matti, to finish fourth was exactly what we wanted,” said Paddon.

“Okay, there are still things we need to keep working on and keep improving, but we’ve made good steps in the last 12 months. Our goal was to back up the result in Sardinia by staying calm, driving fast and consistently and making sure we got to the finish. And what’s what we did.”

Neuville rolled in the penultimate stage but was quickly back on his wheels to finish ahead of Kris Meeke.

The Ulsterman struggled for confidence after Thursday’s shakedown roll, but moved ahead of Robert Kubica when the Pole punctured in the final stage.

Mads Østberg surrendered second in the championship to Mikkelsen after finishing ninth, while Dani Sordo completed the leaderboard.

Australia’s Scott Pedder completed his first full European World Rally Championship outing bringing his WRC2 Fiesta home 12th in the category.

After two torturous outings this year in Portugal and Italy (Sardinia), Pedder was determined to reach the finish line intact in Poland.

Despite some mechanical challenges he managed to bring the car home 29th overall.

“What I’m learning with the set-up of the car is that everything is the opposite of what I’d expect compared to every other rally car I’ve ever driven,” said Pedder.

“The car had been oversteering quite a bit, so usually I’d have softened the rear springs to compensate. In fact we stiffened the rear, I thought that was the wrong call, but it worked!”

The WRC next heads to the famous Rally Finland on 30 July – 2 August.

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