“It's amazing, I'm really, really happy. Arriving here I said 'okay, it will be a difficult rally for me - I don't like this kind of stage, it's very rough and it's my first time.' But immediately we found a good feeling and a good rhythm, and now we have won, so it's perfect,” said Ogier.
Petter Solberg was however the true hero of the weekend, as he was in the race to become the first privateer to win in the last 16 years. He ended the first two days of action on top of the timing reports, but his C4 WRC suffered a broken damper on Sunday and he was unable to resist Ogier.
“Obviously I never thought we would go so well after the flu and the fever and everything - I felt terrible at the start of the rally,” started Solberg, reminding everyone that he barely made the cockpit for this weekend’s event due to illness.
“But the car worked really well and I really had a good feeling for everything. Unfortunately we had this problem with the car. But I'm really happy.”
Third and fourth belonged to Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala and Citroen Junior’s Dani Sordo, despite the former suffering a broken driveshaft midway through the Saturday action. With 4 stages left in the rally however, Latvala overtook the Spaniard and secured 3rd place.
Championship leader Sebastien Loeb had to settle for 5th place after a struggling weekend, ahead of Mikko Hirvonen. The Finn was in contention for the rally victory before the Sunday stages, only for a broken differential to set him back to 6th overall. The Top 10 was completed by Henning Solberg, Federico Villagra, Jari Ketomaa and Martin Prokop.
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