Ogier bares down on Safari Rally lead

World Rally Championships leader Sebastian Ogier won the Soysambu and the Sleeping warriors stages of the early morning session on the third day of the Safari Rally, to reduce the deficit between him and Safari standings leader Thierry Neuville.

Belgian Neuville started quickest on the opening stage of Elementaita as his Hyundai i20 showed sheer speed on the smoother roads as he widened his advantage to 26.3sec over Japanese Takamoto Katsuta.

However Frenchman Ogier was in no mood to surrender easily, as the put on a spirited fight to win Soysambu1 and Sleeping Warrior1.

By the end of stage 10, Hyundai’s Neuville had a lead of 28.1sec over Ogier of Toyota, and expressed relieve at today’s conditions as compared to the previous stages that had retired many drivers.

 “With the experience from the first day, you have so many things you can carry on to the next day regarding set-up, ride heights and the speed you can go. We learned so much that, today, everybody knows how fast you can go in which sections. Maybe once I went a little bit wide, I went over stones, but nothing bad.” said Neuville.

Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta was more cautious with his stages in the early morning dash and Ott Tanak closed in on third place after slicing nine seconds off Takamoto.

“It’s exactly what I had to do. Quite hard stages, it’s very difficult and I’m making so many mistakes,” Katsuta explained. “I didn’t take huge risks, but it’s so difficult to follow the road and know where you are. There are so many changes after the recce.”

Kalle Rovanperä and Dani Sordo both returned today, after retiring yesterday.

Onkar Rai continued his impressive drive as he held on to the lead of the WRC3 standings, ahead of Karan Patel and Carl Flash Tundo.