Sébastien Loeb overcame the punishing Panzerplatte to extend his lead of the Rally Deutschland to 23 seconds over Citroen team-mate Dani Sordo.
The 48-kilometre Panzerplatte was the highlight of the four opening stages on Saturday and it may prove decisive in the overall fortunes of Loeb and his WRC rivals.
“It’s been a good morning,” said the six-time world champion on Saturday.
“The gravel section on the first stage was quite interesting because we are obviously not on the right tyres for those conditions but it was not really a problem.
"Dani was not far behind after eight stages so I had to keep pushing. My time on Panzerplatte was down to managing the tyre by judging my pace and knowing the limit of the tyre.”
Sordo was actually faster than Loeb through stage eight, at St Wendeler Land, but the Spaniard is under team orders to secure second place.
While Loeb, who is chasing his fifth win of this year's competition, successfully negotiated the Panzerplatte, the same could not be said of Finn Jari-Matti Latvala.
The Ford driver was third overall until he spun off the track 10 kilometres before the finish of the Panzerplatte, which dropped him to fourth, 8.9 seconds behind Sébastien Ogier.
Kimi Räikkönen was sixth but dropped to ninth halfway through Saturday after being forced to complete part of stage nine and all of the Panzerplatte with a broken left rear anti-roll link on his C4, which his mechanics were unable to repair.
For more on this weekend's rally in Germany, visit our event page.
Citroën Sport Photos
Comments
Add a comment