The pair had completed the morning\u2019s final punishing Sleeping Warrior stage but were unable to make it back to service. Solberg\u2019s Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 suffered electrical and transmission issues on the liaison, while team-mate Ogier\u2019s charge came to an abrupt halt after an alternator problem struck his car on the road section.<\/p>\n
Their retirements followed an earlier setback for Toyota Gazoo Racing on the same stage, where championship leader Elfyn Evans was forced to stop with rear-right suspension damage while running second overall.<\/p>\n
Within the space of a single stage and its return to service, the team\u2019s commanding 1-2-3 hold on the rally has therefore been wiped out.<\/p>\n
Solberg and Ogier had both battled through difficult conditions on the 31km Sleeping Warrior test. Solberg completed the stage virtually blind after running out of windscreen washer fluid in the thick mud, while Ogier had set the fastest time to dramatically close the gap to the rally leader.<\/p>\n
“The last stage was quite muddy and tough, and the mud went into the engine side and broke the alternators for both of them,” deputy team principal Juha Kankkunen revealed. “Oliver also has a little bit of, let\u2019s say, a transmission problem as well, and Elfyn we know already, so it hasn\u2019t been the best morning.<\/p>\n
“I mean, I have been in Kenya so many times that it doesn\u2019t surprise me when something like that happens. The conditions have been really tough and, let\u2019s say, the cars should be built for that. But in those muddy conditions it can go everywhere.<\/p>\n
“Water is not that bad, but the stiff mud sticks everywhere and that can cause problems. It went into the alternator and broke the pulley, let\u2019s say, and things all get stuck.”<\/p>\n
With both cars now out of contention, Takamoto Katsuta inherits the overall lead of the rally. The Japanese driver had adopted a cautious approach through the morning after suffering punctures earlier in the loop and running without any spare tyres remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is super muddy and tricky and we have no spare so I completely backed off,\u201d Katsuta said at the end of Sleeping Warrior. \u201cIt is better to stay in the game and anything can happen in the afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those words proved prophetic, with Katsuta now heading the rally by over a minute ahead of Hyundai drivers Thierry Neuville and Adrien Fourmaux as crews regroup at the Naivasha service park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pair had completed the morning\u2019s final punishing Sleeping Warrior stage but were unable to make it back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-540591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}