Monte Carlo Rally 2013- Day Two

With the roads a challenging mixture of dry asphalt, patchy snow and black ice, Sebastien Loeb continued to stretch his lead in the Monte Carlo Rally on Friday afternoon, while his rivals battle in his wake. Loeb's nearest rival Sebastien Ogier took a cautious approach, the Volkswagen driver already making it clear that as Loeb was not a title threat, he was quite happy to settle for second place on this rally.

Loeb goes into the final day of the rally with a lead of just over one minute and forty-seven seconds. M-Sport Ford driver Evgeny Novikov is now up to third place, benefiting from Dani Sordo's spin on the St Nazaire le Desert to La Mott stage, but the Citroen driver responded on Sisteron to close back to within 1.7s.

Fifth position also changed hands. Mikko Hirvonen struggled with overheating brakes on his Citroen during Sisteron, as VW rival Jari-Matti Latvala made a breakthrough with his Polo R WRC and delivered his best stage of the rally so far. Second fastest behind Loeb catapulted Latvala 15s clear of Hirvonen. Juho Hanninen still holds seventh, ahead of M-Sport team-mate Mads Ostberg, who was fastest on SS13.

Leading positions after SS13:

Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap
1. Sebastien Loeb Citroen 3h36m47.0s
2. Sebastien Ogier VW + 1m47.4s
3. Evgeny Novikov M-Sport Ford + 3m19.9s
4. Dani Sordo Citroen + 3m21.6s
5. Jari-Matti Latvala VW + 4m04.9s
6. Mikko Hirvonen Citroen + 4m19.1s
7. Juho Hanninen M-Sport Ford + 5m15.5s
8. Mads Ostberg M-Sport Ford + 6m18.2s
9. Bryan Bouffier PH Citroen + 8m20.7s
10. Martin Prokop Czech Ford + 18m48.8s

18th January, 2013