WRC Rally Ireland Report Day Two: Sebastien Loeb Continues Domination

Sebastien Loeb and Dani Sordo finished the day two of Rally Ireland comfortably in first and second places, and on course to score a 1-2 result for their Citroen Total team tomorrow.

Loeb holds a dominating 1min 09.1sec lead over his team-mate Sordo at the end of stage 14 of the event’s 19 stages.  Sordo leads Mikko Hirvonen in third, by 1min 21.8sec.

The weather conditions again remained treacherous, with persistent rain again, which led to the Pirelli’s winter tire over the P Zero asphalt tire.

Loeb was in dominant form and was not without incident as the world’s foremost Rally driver showed that even he was not invulnerable to the conditions with a small off-road excursion on the next to last stage of the day.

That would be the only mistake he would make as drove his Citroen C4 to five wins out of the day’s six stages. “We have a nice lead now, everything was okay,” he said. “The tire choice was easy—the stages have been just as tricky as Friday’s but yesterday we were on the normal tarmac tires and it wasn’t working well.

"Now the feeling is okay, but there was a lot of water and the gravel crews have had a big task. But we’re here, the car is good and everything is going well.”

Sordo’s day was only marred by a stall on SS13 slowing him down. “Once again the conditions have been very difficult with so much water on the road and different grip all over the place,” he said. “We were aquaplaning a lot but overall I’m happy with the performance of the car and everything else.”

A power-steering pump failure on his Ford Focus dashed any hope that Mikko Hirvonen had of challenging Sordo or Loeb today. The mechanical problem left him to struggle through two stages with no assistance.

“I was really looking forward to the fight—maybe getting closer to Sordo and continuing the fight tomorrow. Instead the most important thing now is to finish and get the most points I can,” he said.

Holding on to fourth place is Henning Solberg after fending off a strong attack from Chris Atkinson. “On that last stage I pushed as much as I could—I drove like I had my heart in my neck!” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll have to see how we get on, but I’m very, very happy with my driving today.”

Chris Atkinson found a much better pace today after a mixed first day in his new Citroen C4 WRC, a string of top-three times had the Subaru refugee moving two places up the scoreboard to fifth.

Atkinson will start Sunday’s final day only 4.7sec behind Henning Solberg “Considering these are the most difficult conditions I’ve ever seen and I’m in a completely new car it’s been a really good day!” said Atkinson.

“It’s taken me a day and a half to understand how to get the best out of the car. I had a long think about it last night and here we are. I can’t wait to try this car on a dry clean stage!”

The winner of last week’s IRC Rally Monte Carlo, Sebastien Ogier made up the two places he lost when he went off on Special Stage nine. He finished the day sixth. “Without the mistakes this morning it would have been more interesting, but the day has been okay,” he said.

Rounding out the finishers in the final points-winning spots were Matthew Wilson in seventh and Khalid Al Qassimi eighth.

An accident involving the Citroen C2 of J-WRC competitors Hans Weijs Jr. and his co-driver Bjorn de Gandt forced the organizers to stop Special Stage 14. A statement from the organizers reported that Weijs Jr. had been taken to hospital for a precautionary check-up. His co-driver was unhurt.