Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. World Rally champion Sebastien Ogier plunged from second to ninth on Rally Germany with a puncture on Saturday afternoon’s Panzerplatte stage. Ogier had looked set to make inroads into WRC title rival Thierry Neuville’s 21-point lead as he ran second to Ott

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Ott Tanak maintained his Rally Germany cushion over Sebastien Ogier on Saturday morning, as World Rally Championship leader Thierry Neuville fell to fourth. Though Ogier trimmed Toyota driver Tanak’s advantage to 10.6 seconds on the short version of the Panzerplatte military range

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Toyota’s Ott Tanak swept the three stages of Rally Germany’s Friday afternoon loop as World Rally Championship title contenders Sebastien Ogier and Thierry Neuville fell away from his lead. Tanak won every one of the three stages run in the afternoon to

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Toyota driver Ott Tanak starred ahead of World Rally Championship title contenders Sebastien Ogier and Thierry Neuville to extend his Rally Germany lead on Friday morning. Tanak had led the rally overnight following Thursday’s superspecial stage but fell behind Ogier on the

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Ott Tanak was fastest on Rally Germany’s opening superspecial, which for a long time looked like it would again by topped by WRC2 Skoda driver Jan Kopecky. Last year asphalt ace Kopecky stunned the World Rally Championship by leading outright in Germany

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. The FIA will meet with World Rally Championship event organisers in Germany this weekend to discuss better methods of measuring stage safety following criticism of the use of average speeds. The route for last month’s Rally Finland was altered significantly to feature

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. World Rally Championship leader Thierry Neuville is understood to be closing on a new deal with Hyundai, but the identity of his 2019 team-mates remains up in the air. Neuville, currently 21 points ahead of reigning champion Sebastien Ogier in the standings,

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. M-Sport Ford World Rally Championship WRC2 pairing Gus Greensmith and co-driver Craig Parry were hospitalised last week after a Rally Germany test crash, but Greensmith will make the event. The British duo crashed into one of the German event’s infamous hinkelsteins –

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda hopes the World Rally Championship’s expected return to Japan in 2019 can entice Mitsubishi and Subaru back to the series. All three Japanese brands competed in the WRC during the 1990s, locking out the top three

Citroen has opened talks with five-time World Rally champion Sebastien Ogier as it attempts to sign the Frenchman for 2019. The manufacturer wants to bring Ogier back into its fold seven years after it let him go following an acrimonious season alongside Sebastien Loeb. Ogier’s current agreement with the M-Sport Ford team comes to an

A Fiesta rally car has completed a zip wire stunt to showcase a new stage on this year’s World Rally Championship Rally GB route in collaboration with event backer Dayinsure. The ‘#Skydriver’ video stunt features a rally car at Zip World in Llechwedd Slate Caverns, the home for the Slate Mountain stage in that will

Hyundai’s World Rally Championship points leader Thierry Neuville says he would “love” to have had the support rival Sebastien Ogier received from his team-mates on last weekend’s Rally Finland. The M-Sport Ford team shuffled first Elfyn Evans then Teemu Suninen to move Ogier up the order to fifth, four places ahead of Neuville, who lost

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Citroen’s Mads Ostberg says second place on Rally Finland is key to his hopes of a full-time World Rally Championship return for 2019. Ostberg was the only challenger to eventual winner Ott Tanak last weekend, swapping the lead several times on Friday

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Sebastien Ogier says his M-Sport Ford team needs to find more pace from its Fiesta WRC to have a chance of back-to-back World Rally Championship titles. Ogier could only finish fifth on Rally Finland last weekend, helped by team orders applied to

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Ott Tanak completed a dominant Rally Finland victory for Toyota with a calm run to the finish, while Thierry Neuville limited the damage to his World Rally Championship lead. After a spectacular lead battle with the resurgent Citroen of Mads Ostberg through

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Ott Tanak is two stages away from his second World Rally Championship victory this year on Rally Finland, while his Toyota team-mate Esapekka Lappi crashed out on Sunday’s first stage. With a healthy lead already in place overnight Tanak slowed his pace

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Toyota World Rally Championship driver Ott Tanak will take a lead of nearly 40 seconds into the final day of Rally Finland. A controlled run through the Saturday afternoon stages meant he extended his advantage to 39.9s despite a minor power steering

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Ott Tanak took charge of Rally Finland with a clean sweep of Saturday morning stage wins for the Toyota World Rally team. On Friday Tanak had amazed rivals by emerging with a 5.4-second lead over Mads Ostberg’s Citroen despite his third place

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Toyota World Rally Championship driver Ott Tanak edged his lead over Mads Ostberg up to 5.8 seconds by the end of the first full day of Rally Finland. Tanak and Citroen’s Ostberg spent Friday embroiled in a huge battle for first position,

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Hyundai will enter its factory World Rally Championship driver Dani Sordo on the Czech round of the European Rally Championship in Zlin next month. Sordo’s outing is designed to showcase Hyundai’s new R5-spec i20 in the ERC, where Skoda and Ford remain

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Toyota’s Ott Tanak holds a narrow Rally Finland lead over the resurgent Citroen of Mads Ostberg, while World Rally Championship leader Thierry Neuville is only 10th after making a mistake. Before the weekend, Neuville had insisted that his focus was on protecting

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Toyota’s Ott Tanak holds a slender Rally Finland lead after setting the quickest time on the opening superspecial stage on the streets of Jyvaskyla. The Estonian won the Harju test by just 0.7 seconds, continuing his strong vein of form after winning

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. M-Sport has agreed for World Rally champion Sebastien Ogier to switch to the same dampers he used at Volkswagen for his Ford on this week’s Rally Finland. In addition to the significant aerodynamic revisions at the rear of his car, Ogier will

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Thierry Neuville’s hopes of a maiden Rally Finland victory have been put on ice this week as the World Rally Championship leader focuses his efforts on extending his points lead. Neuville starts the event 27 points clear of nearest rival Sebastien Ogier

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. The Citroen World Rally team believes it can take the pace it showed in a surprise one-two result on the Rally Finland shakedown into the event. Mads Ostberg topped the timesheets for Thursday morning’s 2.64-mile Versala stage, more than a second clear

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. World Rally champion Sebastien Ogier expects Toyota to set the Rally Finland pace again this season, and will focus on his title battle with Thierry Neuville. Toyota dominated last year’s Finnish WRC round, with Esapekka Lappi taking victory, and M-Sport Ford driver

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. M-Sport has confirmed it will run a revised rear aerodynamic set-up on its Ford Fiesta WRC at Rally Finland – but only for Sebastien Ogier. The new rear wing and bumper, crafted at Ford’s motorsport development centre in Charlotte earlier this season,

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Sebastien Ogier believes the “disadvantage” World Rally Championship title rival Thierry Neuville will inevitably face by running first on the road means he can still win the 2018 title. Ogier trails Hyundai driver Neuville by 27 points as the WRC prepares to

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Volkswagen Motorsport team principal Sven Smeets has urged World Rally Championship officials to take swift action to find an alternative energy solution for the series. Autosport understands the FIA is working through possible electric and hybrid options for the WRC, but so

Get unlimited access You have only 5 articles remaining to view this month. Citroen is considering a significant set-up change to its C3 WRC ahead of next week’s Rally Finland. The French firm has been testing a new front geometry solution recently, but will take a final decision after Craig Breen, Mads Ostberg and Khalid