WRC Round 6: Rally ACA Argentina Day 3
Day Three of Rally Argentina opened with Loeb in the lead by almost 50 seconds over Petter Solberg. Gigi Galli had worked hard to hold onto third on day two, while Petter’s older brother Henning was locked in a battle with teammate Manfred Stohl over fourth place. The battle between Atkinson and Sordo is still close as they are separated by only 20 seconds after Atkinson incurred a time penalty at the end of day two. Matthew Wilson lost eighth to his teammate Louis Perez-Companc, and on day three will be charging to take it back. Day Three of Rally Argentina consists of only 4 stages, 2 fan favorites up in the mountains and then a repeat of the super specials back in Cordoba.
Over stages 19 and 20, despite some mechanical difficulties, Petter was able to eat away almost 14 seconds of Loeb’s lead, bringing the gap down to around 30 seconds; a good show of competition, but not enough to get him close to winning. Gigi Galli had a rough start, bleeding time over the course of stages 19 and 20, but he retained enough of a lead over his nearest competitors that he was able to secure his best ever WRC placement barring a retirement on the super specials. Manfred Stohl showed his determination by overtaking Henning Solberg on stages 19 and 20, creating a significant lead over the Finn where before the gap was only a few seconds. Stohl lead Henning by almost 57 seconds going into the super specials. Atkinson pushed hard and was able to narrow the gap between him and Sordo down to only two seconds for the super special. Matthew Wilson also showed similar determination and decreased Perez-Companc’s lead to only three seconds going into the final stages.
The super specials displayed a number of position changes and of course the determination of the two close battles between Sordo/Atkinson and Perez-Companc/Wilson. Perez-Companc stalled at the start of the super special, losing almost 5 seconds getting started, Wilson did not have this problem and was able to take eighth place making him the youngest person to ever score points in the WRC. Atkinson pushed hard, but wasn’t quick enough to close the gap to Sordo; he finished only 4 seconds behind him overall. Petter Solberg wasn’t the only Solberg with bad luck though, Henning Solberg’s Peugot suffered clutch failure on the super special forcing him to take a nominal time plus a penalty, dropping him from fifth to seventh allowing Sordo and Atkinson to move up to firfth and sixth respectively. The top four didn’t change and Loeb cruised to his third victory of the year. His co-driver Daniel Elenor tied Louis Moyer for most winning co-driver with 24 wins, while Loeb is only a few wins away from tying and possibly taking Carlos Sainz’s driver winning record.
At the end of Round 6 Loeb has once again taken a commanding lead of the driver’s championship with 56 points, Gronholm remains in second place with 35 points, Sordo also keeps third place with 24 points. Petter Solber is able to move up to fourth with 18 points. Although he is tied with Manfred Stohl he takes the higher ranking due to his higher placement in this rally. Gigi Galli takes up residence in sixth place with Alex Bengue behind him in seventh. With his good points finish here Chris Atkinson makes it onto the leaderboard in the eighth position.
Next up is Round Seven: Rally Italia Sardinia which will be taking place May 19th-21st. Look forward to a report on each day of action from that rally as well!
Check out Car-Desktop.com for Rally wallpaper.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
[…] Today I updated the motorsports section with some rally racing cars. I added two new cars and updated one. The two new cars are the Peugeot 307 WRC and the Citroen Xsara WRC. I found the Peugeot pictures to be very interesting, I found quite a lot of them. The Xsara also has a few good one’s, but I will be honest it isn’t as interesting. Then finally we have the Subaru WRC 2006, we already have pictures of the older model. But I figured an update was in order. Click here to go to: 307 WRC, Xsara WRC, Impreza WRC 2006 (note that the Peugeot gallery has multiple pages). Check out the latest on WRC at cars.blogs.ca. […]