Sébastien Ogier heads into the final day of Rally Islas Canarias with just a 3.8-second advantage over Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg, as Jon Armstrong flirted with disaster on the day’s final stage.
Ogier had led the fifth round of this year’s world championship since Friday morning, but hasn’t been able to relax with his young team-mate mirroring his every move.
The reigning champion started Saturday 8.9 seconds ahead of the Monte Carlo winner, but lost 3.6s over the course of the morning to carry a 5.3s advantage into the afternoon.
Gaps were extremely close on SS12 with Solberg nicking a tenth of a second from Ogier, before the pair incredibly set an equal time on SS13.
That gave Ogier a 5.2s advantage ahead of the event’s longest stage, but when his tires began to overheat Solberg just sent it, and nicked 1.4s from Ogier to slash the lead down to under four seconds.
“I had a horrible stage but eventually when the tires went I thought ‘ah I’ll got for it’,” said Solberg. “Africa was bad luck and Croatia was my fault, so I won’t panic to take him, but let’s see. It’s four long stages to go, and anything is possible.”
Ogier countered: “I’m excited for tomorrow – finally some new stages, it’ll be nice to drive. That’s the reason we are here: if we don’t enjoy this fight, we might as well stay at home.”