Ogier leads, Loeb breaks in Monte Carlo

One-minute, 45 seconds is the gap from the reigning WRC World Champion Sebastien Ogier to Jari-Matti Latvala after 8 stages and two days of competition.

Again today, fickle weather made tire choice key, but Ogier said while he didnt have the right tire choice, he made it to the end of the stage.

“I had no idea that I was in the lead. Let's wait and see. The tyres were not ideal for here, but it's all I had,” he told WRC. com

The reason for his confusion was rally leader Sebastien Loeb’s drop of over 5 minutes in the final stage of the day.

Incidents all around

Rolling past the flying finish with ratchet straps holding parts of the car together on the rear end of his Citroen DS3, Loeb said the suspension broke after contact with a rock on the stage.

"It happened when I hit - a little bit - a rock in an icy place. Not too hard, but it broke - I don't know exactly what - but something is wrong. I had to try really hard because I knew with the road conditions it was impossible in this (road) position, so I tried really hard with a different tyre choice and did a mistake. Will it get back to service? I will try."

Ironically, Loeb’s Citroen team mate who had the best position to make the Citroen effort for a win two-fold, also fell out of contention in a very similar fashion to Loeb, but it is not expected that the Brit will be bale to limp his machine to service.

Lastly, while he made it to the end of the day, Robert Kubica had two major offs during the final stages of the day. The two incidents send Kubica down the running order.

“We had a massive moment at high speed. We went off, and thanks to the spectators we got back, then later at a junction we went off again, slid on the snow, hit a tree and punctured the tyre. We drove 10km like that,” he said.

How they run

Rounding out the top five overall after day 2 was Andreas Mikkelsen sitting third, a little over two-and-a-half minutes off the lead. Ott Tanak continues his impressive drive, breathing down Mikkelsen’s neck only 9 seconds back. And in fifth overall is Mads Ostberg.