How the WRC's bit-part player reignited Hyundai's challenge

In only his second World Rally Championship event of the year as part of the rotating pool of drivers in Hyundai's third car, Dani Sordo took a thoroughly deserved victory on Rally Italia Sardegna; his third career WRC win and his second in as many visits to Sardinia.

As the WRC continues to proceed cautiously out of lockdown, this final gravel round on the 2020 schedule felt much more like a full WRC event than either of the preceding events in Turkey or Estonia. Spectators and ceremonial events may have been absent (officially at least), but six timed stages on the opening day felt like business as usual.

Four of the six would be complete before the day's service halt, which meant that many crews took a measured approach early on. Championship leader Elfyn Evans had the job of running first on the road, thereby doing the lion's share of sweeping the loosest sand and gravel for everyone else's benefit.

He was followed by his six-time champion Toyota team-mate Sebastien Ogier. The third Toyota driver, Kalle Rovanpera, was also circumspect after his mechanics had worked through the night to rebuild his Yaris after a roll at the end of Thursday's shakedown stage. The Hyundai i20s of defending drivers' champion Ott Tanak and perennial runner-up Thierry Neuville were also running well within themselves.

This left the M-Sport Ford Fiestas of Esapekka Lappi and Teemu Suninen to claim the spotlight early on. Both Finns have expressed frustration in recent weeks as the heavy financial toll of COVID-19 upon M-Sport has affected the team's progress.

Suitable attitude adjustment was enforced by team principal Richard Millener prior to the start of the rally and it paid off with dramatic effect. Lappi came through the 12km (7.5-mile) opening stage a full second in front of Evans. And his benchmark was immediately smashed by Suninen, a previous winner in Sardinia in both WRC3 and WRC2 and runner-up overall in 2019. He took a colossal 12.4s lead and then treated the world to an expletive-laden celebration.

"That was probably the best comment we've ever heard, I reckon," Millener enthused. "Not the swearing, the other bit about 'sending it'. I think he's definitely been hanging around English people too long!"

M-Sport's jubilation was tempered on the next stage, however, when Lappi's Fiesta coasted to a halt in a cloud of steam. Its engine had boiled dry and would prove too badly damaged to restart the event.

There was no cloud of steam around Tanak's Hyundai, but something was clearly amiss and he would lose roughly half a minute per stage for the morning loop. What ailed him nobody was saying, least of all the Estonian. As his chances ebbed away, Tanak sat in grimacing silence rather than discuss the issue - even with co-driver Martin Jarveoja, lest an enterprising countryman translate his words and post them on social media.

"We had a lot of movement in the tyre but actually the wear was not as bad as we thought it would be. So we probably had a little bit of margin to go a bit harder" Elfyn Evans

Undoubtedly the happiest man on the morning loop was Sordo, who took full advantage of starting each stage at the back of the pack and benefited from a much cleaner road surface as a result. The Spaniard also discovered that he had gone the right way with his tyre choice of mediums all round with just one spare, the same as the Toyota drivers.

Sordo won the second stage, was third behind the Toyotas on the third and then won the final stage of the opening loop to sweep past Suninen. After the break, Sordo won both of the day's remaining stages and took a 17.4s advantage from Suninen overnight.

Neuville sat unhappy in third, penalised by the weight of a second spare tyre - and his car stalling twice on the fifth stage. A feverish battle had broken out between Neuville and Ogier, who were separated by just 0.8s after the entire first day's running. If anything, Ogier was even less happy than his Belgian rival, directing his frustration towards the road order and his displeasure towards gravel sweeping.

"It's just ridiculous but nothing new," he snapped. "Rally is amateur sport; it will stay amateur sport. It cannot be managed in a professional way."

Saturday's switch-around in the running order alleviated that problem for the fastest drivers. Another six-stage schedule beckoned and Ogier duly set the fastest time on four of them.

Despite Ogier's revived pace, Sordo managed to extend his lead to 36.5s after stage eight and still held a 27.4s advantage at the end of what proved to be a day of very mixed fortunes throughout the field.

Suninen cut a troubled figure as his Fiesta proved unable to withstand the charge of the Hyundais and Toyotas, slipping back to fifth. M-Sport took heart from a hugely impressive outing for Gus Greensmith in the team's third car, which ran sixth, just shy of his career-best fifth place in Turkey. Hopes of a repeat were denied however when the alternator belt was knocked off on stage nine and the battery was rendered inoperable soon afterwards.

By then, one of the five potential champions who arrived in Sardinia had gone out: Rovanpera. The young Finn had been complaining that his car felt loose from shakedown onwards, and on stage eight disaster struck. The rear end stepped out just a little too far and snagged a tree, spinning the Yaris through 180 degrees.

It then hit another tree square on at the rear, ripping off the right side of the car, making a mess of its rollcage and the rest of the structure, but its crew escaped unharmed. Team principal Tommi Makinen looked shaken when inspecting the wreckage.

Rovanpera's crash left championship leader Evans battling with Suninen just out of the potential podium places. The Welshman stands atop the championship table thanks to consistency rather than outright speed and he was sticking to the game plan once again as tyre management became a major preoccupation.

"We had a lot of movement in the tyre but actually the wear was not as bad as we thought it would be," he said. "So we probably had a little bit of margin to go a bit harder."

No such margin was available to either Neuville or Ogier, both of whom were on the ragged edge. Neuville was kicking himself for running a less-than-optimal tyre choice once again. Although he had abandoned the second spare, he had chosen to stick with mediums all round in the afternoon when Toyota had worked out that a medium/hard mix was the way to go.

All of this dropped him back behind Ogier to the tune of 1.5s at the overnight halt. For Sordo, having Ogier behind him was no problem as it avoided the potential question of having to slow down in order to assist Neuville's championship chances.

"I will try to help myself to win in the rally, and the team, you know?" he said. "I don't think these people need help. I just come here to do a rally like the others and I'm happy."

Tanak had kept a low profile since the opening day, but the five bonus powerstage points offered a lifeline to his title defence and he grasped it with both hands

After two days of sunshine in the mid-20s, cooler conditions greeted the runners on Sunday morning; an overcast sky dropping ambient temperatures by 10 degrees C from the first two days.

A single loop of just two stages awaited, which was to be run twice through the day. Ogier and Neuville made the leap into hyperspace from their very first kilometre. Ogier took first blood, 0.2s faster than Neuville but 12.1s faster than Sordo. Neuville then won the next from Sordo by 0.8s and 1.6s faster than Ogier. The Frenchman claimed the penultimate stage 1.6s in front of Neuville, closing to just 9.2s from Sordo.

"It's never safe and I don't know, I don't understand the times," Sordo said. "They are really, really fast in this stage. I am really surprised."

Then came the powerstage, where Tanak played his joker. He had kept a low profile since the opening day, but the five bonus powerstage points offered a lifeline to his title defence and he grasped it with both hands.

Neuville was faster than Tanak on the split times and desperately needed a full score both to help pull clear of Tanak and to close on the Toyota drivers' scores, but brake issues intervened, dropping him 0.7s behind Tanak and costing him a point.

Ogier came next with his Yaris WRC, which was several yards past the limit as he wrestled it like a 1980s Group B car. It was mesmerising to watch, but was only third fastest and dropped him back into third overall, a second behind Neuville.

Sordo then closed the stage carefully but his time was just fast enough: 5.1s being the final margin of victory over team-mate Neuville, pushing Hyundai back past Toyota in the manufacturers' standings. That was mission accomplished as far as Hyundai team boss Andrea Adamo was concerned.

Muted celebrations then followed out of respect for the loss of Sordo's countrywoman, co-driver Laura Salvo, in competition on the Rally Vidreiro Centro de Portugal on Saturday. Sordo, the leading light in Spain's close-knit rally community, had carried her name on his car throughout the final day.

A final twist lay ahead for Hyundai in post-event scrutineering when Sordo's rear subframe was found to be 24.5 grams below its homologated weight: enough to be outside the permitted tolerance. The FIA accepted that this was a quality control issue on Hyundai's part and the results were finalised, but Hyundai had to pay a €10,000 fine with a further €20,000 suspended in case of a similar breach in the next 12 months.

In WRC2, Sweden's Pontus Tidemand turned the championship tide in his favour with another win earned by taking a cautious approach at the wheel of his unsponsored Skoda while his rivals hit tyre and reliability problems. Chief among them was fellow WRC refugee Mads Ostberg, who lost four minutes on Friday after being forced to run with only rear-wheel drive. His Citroen then picked up numerous other issues throughout the weekend, ruining his 100% starts-to-wins ratio in 2020.

Victory in WRC3 also fell to a driver who chose to trudge through a puncture-strewn event as Jari Huttunen took honours for Hyundai. The Junior World Rally Championship also completed its penultimate round for the season, Sweden's Tom Kristensson taking his second win of the year.