Sebastien Ogier is aware that sport would be hard some times and accepts this side after his retirement from the lead of Rally Italia Sardegna, but he keeps as a positive prospect the decent speed he showed throughout the weekend.
The eight-time World Rally Champion was aiming to break another record this year as he wanted to win in Sardinia for the fifth time in his career as he and Sebastien Loeb have won four times there and are the WRC drivers with the most victories on the Mediterranean island. During the last weekend, Ogier was fighting with Esapekka Lappi for the lead of Rally Italia Sardegna and were many swaps between them. A water splash did not affect his run on Saturday afternoon despite the fact that he arrived at the stop control of Stage 12 with a misfire, but after two stages he went off the road 1.4 Km into SS14 as he understeered a left-hander and slid down an embarkment on the outside of the corner meaning that he could not be able to complete the afternoon loop of Saturday. The unknown story of this incident is that his boot was full of mud after his changing a rear puncture before the start line of SS14 and his foot slid from the brake pedal resulting in braking later and going straight into the ditch. Toyota confirmed his restart for the final day of the event with the intention of his scoring points for the manufacturers' championship in Powerstage, but eventually he gave only to himself one point as Elfyn Evans and Kalle Rovanpera were faster than him in PS.
"Yesterday we could get back out there and it was all about the Power Stage and trying to take some points for the team if we could", Ogier said.
"Again the weather made things quite tricky at the end of the rally, and the feeling was not really there to take too much risk in these conditions.
"We kind of finished with some decent speed but it was nothing crazy.
"So overall it’s probably not a weekend we will remember strongly but that’s the way it is sometimes in sport and you have to accept it.
"There’s still a lot of positives we can take with the speed that we had this weekend, and let’s hope that on the next one the luck will be back on our side".
Photo Credits: Toyota
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