Dani Sordo’s frustrating rally took another turn for the worse when the Spaniard retired his Hyundai i20 after the opening 39.99km stage from San Agustin to Villa del Dique (SS6).
Sordo stopped after 5.5km and his engineers radioed instructions asking him to switch engine settings. He completed a further 3km before stopping again, but restarted and limped to the finish dropping 17 minutes.
His car’s dashboard displayed a warning message: turbo. “It’s a little bit the same problem as yesterday,” reported Sordo, who worked on the car after the stop line before retiring for the second consecutive day.
Sixth-placed Martin Prokop was lucky to survive a big impact to the right rear wheel after his Fiesta RS slipped off a bridge in a water splash, while the man on the move was Robert Kubica, the Pole climbing ahead of Elfyn Evans to claim fourth in his Fiesta RS.
In WRC 2, second-placed Yuriy Protasov rolled his Fiesta RRC while both Nicolas Fuchs and Jari Ketomaa stopped to change punctures.
Burning the midnight oil
After yesterday’s carnage which saw 11 of the 29 starters retire, amazingly the entire field checked into early morning service for the third day.
But there were many late nights in the Villa Carlos Paz service park. Due to the extraordinary attrition, there was a shortage of rescue vehicles to bring stranded cars back and some did not return until almost midnight.
Weary mechanics then started rebuilding them in readiness for the 06.25 restart.
One of the worst teams affected was Hyundai, who lost Dani Sordo and Thierry Neuville’s i20 cars on the final stage. Sordo’s problem was traced to a broken exhaust manifold while Neuville’s was a loose turbo pipe, the same issue that delayed Sordo yesterday morning.
Neuville’s car returned just before midnight and work was not completed until 03.00. Team members were back in service just two hours later to prepare for today!
Such was the damage when Mikko Hirvonen slammed his Ford Fiesta RS into a wall in the opening stage that M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson estimated it cost £75,000 to restore it to health.
Mechanics stripped the car back to a shell before tackling this job list:
— Repairs to the front section of the roll cage
— Replacing the dampers on all four corners
— New front and rear suspension
— New gearbox
— Rear differential
— Front and rear right brake calipers