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WRC NEWS

WRC Rally Deutschland: Sebastien Loeb closes in on victory

By Matt Beer

Saturday, August 25th 2012, 16:48 GMT

Sebastien Loeb Rally Deutschland Sebastien Loeb is closing on the ninth Rally Deutschland victory of his incredible World Rally Championship career after a trouble-free run through leg two.

After the chaos of the morning left Loeb over a minute and a half clear, the Citroen driver has taken it relatively easy.

He heads into Sunday's decisive three stages 1m42.9s ahead of Ford's Jari-Matti Latvala, who is keeping Loeb's resurgent team-mate Mikko Hirvonen a comfortable half-minute behind.

The big news of Saturday afternoon was Ott Tanak's performance and retirement.

The Ford protege stormed through SS10 and SS11 to take the first asphalt stage wins of his WRC career, grabbing fourth from Mads Ostberg in the process. But Tanak then crashed out on the famously tough Panzerplatte stage that concluded the day.

Dani Sordo also stopped on Panzerplatte after damaging his Prodrive-run Mini. He had been running sixth.

Mini still has a representative in the top five, as Tanak and Sordo's disasters moved Chris Atkinson into fifth on his first outing for Motorsport Italia.

The rest of the order remains unclear as Peter van Merksteijn Jr rolled his Citroen near Tanak's incident. The Dutch driver was unhurt but his car blocked the course and stopped the stage.

Leading positions after SS12:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car             Time/Gap
 1.  Sebastien Loeb      Citroen            2h58m51.8s
 2.  Jari-Matti Latvala  Ford                + 1m42.9s
 3.  Mikko Hirvonen      Citroen             + 2m12.7s
 4.  Mads Ostberg        Adapta Ford         + 3m07.8s
 5.  Chris Atkinson      Italia Mini         + 6m59.0s
 6.  Sebastien Ogier     VW Skoda            + 8m10.6s
 7.  Andreas Mikkelsen   VW Skoda           + 10m20.4s
 8.  Nasser Al-Attiyah   Qatar Citroen      + 10m52.0s
 9.  Mathieu Arzeno      Sainteloc Peugeot  + 13m03.5s
10.  Sepp Wiegand        VW Skoda           + 13m31.3s

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