Henk Lategan is discovering Portugal through the road book for the first time of his career. Before starting the rally yesterday, the South African Safari Rally winner identified some points in common with his home region, Southern Africa: "Going by what I've seen here, it could resemble a race in Botswana among the trees and vegetation. I know the others will be faster. I like following a track instead of having traces all over the place, I like rally-style races, so I ought to enjoy this." His prediction was spot on, although the first special of the day was a merry-go-round in which as many as four drivers took over the reins of the race: Nasser Al Attiyah seized the early lead, only to relinquish it to João Ferreira, who in turn surrendered it to Seth Quintero, who lost it after spending more than 17 minutes fixing a brake disc, with Lategan hitting the front when it mattered the most.
The Qatari, who claimed the trophy last year but has been struggling with "overly aggressive settings" for slippery terrain, spent most of the stage knocking on the door of the podium before making a late recovery to finish second. However, a triple whammy of penalties for a false start, speeding and a failure to respect his transfer time, totalling 3 minutes and 20 minutes, relegated him to eighth place, 4′57″ off the pace. Toyota locked out the top 5 in Grândola: Lategan scooped up his fourth W2RC win and surged to the top of the race standings, where he now leads Lucas Moraes by 1′51″, Ferreira by 1′52″, Saood Variawa by 3′03″, and Yazeed Al Rajhi from Overdrive Racing by 3'52". The first two men out of the gate this morning, Carlos Sainz (Ford M-Sport) and Sébastien Loeb (The Dacia Sandriders), paid the price for opening the road. The Spaniard is tenth at 6′09″ and the Frenchman sixth at 4′15″.
Mattias Ekström may not be a bush baby, but he adapted to the local terrain perfectly to bounce back from yesterday's defeat by 1 second at the hands of Gonçalo Guerreiro (Nasser Racing) and nab victory by over a minute over the homegrown talent. This is the Swede's sixth championship triumph in Challenger, equalling his Ultimate tally and bringing his total to 12. Ekström holds the overall lead with 1′07″ in hand over the Portuguese driver and 4′54″ over Pim Klaassen (DaklaPack Rallysport).
Alexandre Pinto followed up his win in the prologue with another victory over his new teammate, Enrico Gaspari. Today's gap and overall gap: 13'54". This is Portugal's 27th SSV win, which makes it the most prolific country ahead of Poland (26) and Lithuania (22).
SCHEDULE:
4:30 pm: final press conference
7 pm: prize-giving
Portugal: UTC+01:00 / Spain: UTC+02:00
Source: W2RC / A.S.O.
Photo: ImagensDesportivas.com
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