F1 Fanatic

I’m listening to the Portuguese radio, they are broadcasting live too, but only for this event. People who are watching the rally send some messages to them when something happens, so they are giving some good info.

Latvala has finally spoken to the journalists and, besides confirming the fuel pressure problems, he said that some water got into the engine when crossing a river and he lost power. That’s all I could understand since his English is a bit bad and he speaks too low.

Dani Sordo continues with the problem with the said window and his car is reported to be brown on the inside instead of white, as do the drivers.

Petter Solberg has lost more than one minute on the Loulé 2 special due to the loss of power steering. He is getting very, very tired. When he stopped he had to drink two water bottles, and he must have drank that water very quickly because he started talking very soon.

Here’s a video summing up day 3 of the rally:

And here is Petter Solberg after doing a stage without any power steering:

Today the rally starts early, the cars going to the stages around 7 am.

Congrats to Mikko, seemed like difficult conditions today for the final day but he held it together. Ostberg a well deserved 2nd and Novikov a fantastic 3rd, despite a throttle problem on the last few stages. Solberg had a brilliant recovery to 4th. Sordo won the Power stage from Latvala and Ott Tanak.

Championship Standings
1. Mikko Hirvonen – 75
2. Sebastian Loeb – 66
3. Petter Solberg – 59
4. Mads Østberg – 46
5. Evgeny Novikov – 36
6. Jari-Matti Latvala – 28
7. Dani Sordo – 21
8. Nasser Al-Attiyah – 18
9. Ott Tänak – 15
10. Martin Prokop – 12

BREAKING NEWS: Mikko Hirvonen has been desclassifed due to clutch irregularities. Consequently, Mads Otsberg has been handed his first ever win in the WRC.

Well, what an eventful rally! Very disappointing for Hirvonen, all told he’d got his Citroen career off to a great start.