Things in the WRC have certainly heated up since Sébastien Loeb broke his arm in a mountain biking incident… Marcus Gronholm charged back into title contention with victory in Rally Turkey.
Things in the WRC have certainly heated up since Sébastien Loeb broke his arm in a mountain biking incident. Despite substitute Colin McRae’s best efforts, Marcus Gronholm charged back into title contention with victory in Rally Turkey.
The Finn has closed the gap between himself and the injured Frenchman to 25 points on Sunday, and the double world champion’s team-mate, Mikko Hirvonen, finished 2:23 adrift to secure a Ford Focus WRC one-two. Five of the stage wins belonged to Gronholm, while his compatriot took one.
In the absence of Loeb, Gronholm looked to be almost untouchable during the weekend’s events, the only challenge to his dominance came from Subaru’s Petter Solberg. However, a combination of snow and muddy conditions conspired to eliminate the threat of Solberg as he crashed out on Saturday. The Norwegian showed great determination, taking two of the final three stage wins, but due to his 10-minute restart penalty, the Impreza ace had no hope of a points finish.
Henning Solberg finally got the chance to chance to outshine his older brother, Petter, by earning a podium finish in a 2005 Peugeot 307 WRC as opposed to his sibling’s Subaru works car. Henning overcome challenges from Kronos Racing’s Xavier Pons and Subaru’s Chris Atkinson. Not even his own car (which gave him brake problems late in the event) could stand in the way of a podium finish.
The fight for fourth place proved to be a process of elimination. Subaru’s Atkinson looked to be a firm favourite to finish behind Solberg Snr, but a spin on the penultimate stage saw him drop two places to finish sixth. Kronos Racing’s Pons narrowly beat Stobart’s Kosti Katajamaki to fourth place by a frustrating 1,1 seconds due to gearbox problems afflicting the young Finn’s Ford Focus.
Seventh place belonged to Kronos’ Daniel Sordo. However, with an electrical problem eliminating Colin McRae on the final stage and Pons not being nominated to score for Kronos, Sordo’s three points was the sole contribution to the team tally.
Last of the points were mopped up by OMV Peugeot’s Manfred Stohl, who finished 5,5 seconds behind Sordo.
With three events remaining, Gronholm’s chances of securing a third Championship are still remote – it all depends how quickly Loeb will recover from his injury. Things look different in the manufacturers’ title courtesy of the Ford 1-2 and a tough weekend for Kronos, the gap between the two contenders are just 8 points.
