Crash dents Gardemeister's hopes
Toni Gardemeister's bid for a second consecutive podium in the Rally Catalunya is over, after he ran off the road during the tenth stage on Saturday afternoon
The Ford driver was hoping to follow up on his strong second placed finish in last weekend's Rallye de France as he ran fourth overall early on in the second leg, but he is now out of contention after the incident on Riudecanyes.
Although he managed to finish the stage, Gardemeister's time was 12 minutes and 40.7 seconds off the best time set by rally leader Sebastien Loeb. He has dropped to 17th place overall.
Heading into the second service point of the day, Loeb now has a 54.9 seconds lead over Citroen teammate Francois Duval as they bid to capture their the manufacturers' championship for the French team.
Peugeot's Marcus Gronholm is still third overall after SS10, more than 30 seconds behind Duval but a comfortable one minute and eight seconds ahead of Mikko Hirvonen in a 2003-spec Ford.
Gardemeister's disaster on SS10 has come on a bad day for his Ford team. Roman Kresta was slow on the stage after stalling following a spin, while the flying privateer Dani Sola went off on SS9 just as he looked set to take his second stage victory of the event.
Top 20 leaderboard after SS10:
Pos Driver Make Time 1. Loeb Citroen 2h 21:07.6 2. Duval Citroen + 54.9 3. Gronholm Peugeot + 1:28.0 4. Hirvonen Ford + 2:36.1 5. Pons Citroen + 2:45.3 6. Kresta Ford + 2:54.5 7. Bernardi Peugeot + 3:15.4 8. Warmbold Ford + 4:04.6 9. Kopecky Skoda + 4:25.7 10. Atkinson Subaru + 4:45.8 11. Rovanpera Mitsubishi + 5:26.9 12. Schwarz Skoda + 6:03.2 13. Galli Mitsubishi + 11:32.7 14. Baldacci Fiat + 12:35.6 15. Sola Ford + 12:36.9 16. Sordo Citroen + 12:46.6 17. Gardemeister Ford + 14:32.3 18. Boland Ford + 14:42.9 19. Katajamaki Suzuki + 15:42.6 20. Garcia Ojeda Subaru + 16:37.2
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