The reigning world champion led the timing reports midway through the Friday running and all the way to the finish line, despite driving first on the dusty roads of the Sardegna region. His only true competition was provided by Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen, who managed to edge Loeb in the first few hours of Day 1, after which a tire puncture set the Finn back over a minute.
From that point on, the Frenchman led the rally until the chequered flag, while his Ford rival settled for finishing second, while also grabbing the power stage and, consequently, 3 bonus points in the overall classification.
Petter Solberg had a productive weekend in Italy and, after winning the first stage of the rally, encountered some turbo issues with his Citroen DS3 WRC that dropped him behind leading duo Loeb and Hirvonen. In the end, he took advantage of Sebastien Ogier’s broken suspension in the penultimate stage of the rally to secure 3rd place.
The Frenchman was lucky himself to finish in 4th place, as MINI’s Kris Meeke paid the price of a broken throttle and was thrown off the road early in Day 1, while running 4th.
Hadn’t it been for his crash on Friday, Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala would have probably walked home with the win, as he took no less than 9 out of 18 stage wins this weekend. In the end, he had to settle for 5th place, ahead of MINI’s best placed official driver at WRC return, Dani Sordo.
MM Ford’s Ott Tanak topped Juho Hanninen in the battle for 7th place, while the last point scoring positions went to Stobart’s Matthew Wilson and Barwa Ford’s Nasser Al-Attiyah.
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