Ogier leads as Loeb hits trouble

Sebastien Ogier retained his lead after the second leg of the Rally Mexico but only after Citroen team-mate Sebastien Loeb fell foul of the rulebook.

Frenchman Ogier opened up an 10.5-second lead over Loeb after Saturday’s night’s two closing superspecials and will again be first on the road when the drivers line up for Sunday’s final three stages.

Reigning champion Loeb had been leading the event by 20 seconds prior to stage 15 after wiping out Ogier’s advantage from the first leg, but he hit trouble when his DS3 WRC got stuck in third gear.

Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena managed to remedy the problem, but still arrived five minutes late for the start of the stage and were subsequently hit with a 50-second time penalty.

Loeb clawed the gap to Ogier back to 10.4 seconds over the next two stages, but on stage 17 he lost precious time with a brief stall at a hairpin and faces an uphill task to deny his team-mate a third WRC win tomorrow.

“Of course the gap was better before and I would have preferred to have this starting the final day than to be behind,” said Loeb.

“I will have to really push because there will not be so much cleaning tomorrow as the stages have been used already in some way. It won’t be easy.”

Championship leader Mikko Hirvonen ended the day in third place, albeit 90 seconds off the lead, and knows tomorrow is all about defending the final podium place from Ford team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala.

“I was happier with the car in the afternoon,” said Hirvonen. “We made some changes at the rear and it worked. Now we just need to keep our position tomorrow.”

Petter Solberg recovered from his problems on the opening leg to climb from 13th to fifth at the wheel of his privateer Citroen, while Mads Ostberg finished the day in sixth place ahead of Henning Solberg.