WRC

Rally Sardinia: Citroen leg one summary

SÃ©bastien Loeb/Daniel Elena and Carlos Sainz/Marc Marti put in a remarkable effort during the first leg of the Sardinian rally. Returning to Porto Cervo parc fermÃ©, the two Xsara WRCs are lying in third and fourth positions, and are ideally placed ...

Published: Oct 2, 2004, 11:56 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Sébastien Loeb/Daniel Elena and Carlos Sainz/Marc Marti put in a remarkable effort during the first leg of the Sardinian rally. Returning to Porto Cervo parc fermé, the two Xsara WRCs are lying in third and fourth positions, and are ideally placed for the rest of the rally.

Questions concerning the first edition of the event which has replaced the Sanremo Rally, started during the reconnaissance. The drivers discovered special stages which were slower, rougher and more winding than they had expected. During yesterday's shakedown they noted that, as during the stages used to prepare for the event, the ground improved significantly and rapidly as the cars went through. In these conditions, Sébastien Loeb, opening the road today due to his position as Championship leader, had much to fear from his position as 'sweeper'.

The first special stage, 'Tantariles', appeared to confirm all his fears. Sébastien conceded 32.1 seconds to the leader over the 28.62 km. 'Loelle' (SS2) reassured the Citroën camp : Seb, 3rd fastest, only lost 3.4 sec. Even better, the French driver managed to set the fastest time in 'Tepilora', the last SS of the loop. " At the start, I lost more time than expected," Seb admitted during the midday service. "There was a lot of sand to clear off the road, and the small change I made to the differentials did not prove to be efficient. I went back to the original settings for the next special stages, which went better…"

Sébastien retained this set-up and once more put his trust in the medium Michelin Z tyres for the second time through the day's three speed tests. The improvement in his times gave an idea of that of the terrain : he gained almost two seconds per kilometre covered ! Conceding 8 seconds in 'Tantariles', Seb's time was nearly up with the top times in 'Loelle' and 'Tepilora'. Third after a day as 'sweeper', he had good reason to be satisfied :" The road position naturally penalised me today, but except for SS1, where Petter Solberg set an astonishing time, it was a good day, with a good fight with Marcus Grönholm. I will continue at my chosen pace tomorrow …"

Carlos Sainz underlined the extreme difficulty of the Sardinian route at the start of the day : "The special stages are really narrow and slippery. You have to be extremely alert at all times to avoid making mistakes. I did the best I could in this area, and I still made two mistakes. One in the first corner of the first special stage, the other when I hit the left rear wing in the second test. I had a few other tricky moments, but the second loop went well. We tried to find a good compromise in terms of the suspensions so that we are at ease in the rough sections, but also good in the fast ones. We fought hard all day, and we will do likewise tomorrow…"

-citroen-

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Rally Sardinia: Round 13 preview

Next article Rally Sardinia: Leg one summary

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Colton Herta “maybe underestimated the difference” from IndyCar – F2 boss

FIA F2

F2 FIA F2 2 h

Colton Herta “maybe underestimated the difference” from IndyCar – F2 boss

WEC Barcelona: Genesis secures maiden series pole from Toyota

WEC

WEC WEC

Barcelona

3 h

WEC Barcelona: Genesis secures maiden series pole from Toyota

Five-time IndyCar champion, first-time Indy NXT driver: Alex Palou tops IMS road course test

Indy NXT

IndL Indy NXT 4 h

Five-time IndyCar champion, first-time Indy NXT driver: Alex Palou tops IMS road course test

Gabriel Bortoleto on Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar's F1 success: 'Let's see where we are in 20 years'

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Singapore GP

5 h

Gabriel Bortoleto on Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar's F1 success: 'Let's see where we are in 20 years'

Feature

Discover prime content

A story of persistence as Elfyn Evans' long wait for WRC glory finally ends

WRC

Rally Italy

By Tom Howard

A story of persistence as Elfyn Evans' long wait for WRC glory finally ends

How Elfyn Evans made WRC history in Hollywood blockbuster Sardinia decider

WRC

Rally Italy

By Tom Howard

How Elfyn Evans made WRC history in Hollywood blockbuster Sardinia decider

What a revival of the World Rally Championship could look like

WRC

By Tom Howard

What a revival of the World Rally Championship could look like

How Oliver Solberg lit up WRC title fight in Chile

WRC

Rally Chile

By Tom Howard

How Oliver Solberg lit up WRC title fight in Chile

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts