Rally Portugal - 4th Day: Ogier claims a record win as cooling issues hit Evans



At the end of Rally de Portugal, Sebastien Ogier takes his second consecutive win in the championship with Ott Tanak and Thierry Neuville following him on the classification.

Sebastien Ogier becomes the WRC driver with the most wins in Portugal as he has been victorious six times there while he extended his advantage over the second Ott Tanak in Stage 19 as he was the fastest driver on the first pass from Cabeceiras de Basto.

Tanak finished in second place overall and pushed very hard after the opening stage of Sunday in order to win the fifth WRC round. In fact, he set the fastest time in SS20 and SS20 and managed to decrease his gap from Ogier from 18,1 to 10,1 seconds at the end of SS21. Last but not least, he topped the SuperSunday standings and scored eleven points in total today.

Thierry Neuville completes the podium and does the 2-3 for Hyundai Motorsport, but the most important thing is that he increased furhter his championship lead over Elfyn Evans. Finally, he was the fastest driver in Powerstage by one tenth of a second over Tanak and took the five bonus points in PS.

Adrien Fourmaux overtook Dani Sordo on the classification and stole the fourth place from the Spaniard at the end of Stage 19. Moreover, he faced soe intercom issues on the opening stage of the day as he was not able to hear Alex Coria clearly.

Sordo dropped to fifth after the end of SS19 as he did not feel comfortable with his i20N and the fog while he reported understeer at the end of Stage 19.

Elfyn Evans remains in sixth place overall and his weekend worstened today when he lost more than one minute in Stage 21 as he had to switch into EV mode 17.8 Km into SS21 due to oil temperature issues which were related to the cooling system of his Yaris. Scott Martin was forced to move their car to the stop line of SS21, but they managed to return to the regroup zone and to work on the cooling system before heading to the Powerstage.

Gregoire Munster was outside the top ten and his aim was to gain experience as he has not competed so many times in Portugal compared to his rivals. However, he went off the road 1.1 Km into SS21 as his Puma spun and rode up a bank.

Takamoto Katsuta and Kalle Rovanpera restarted today under the regulations of SuperRally following their retirements on Saturday morning.


Watch below the stage times:







Watch below the overall classification after the end of Rally Portugal:





Photo Credits: Toyota

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