Dani Sordo shines on qualifying in Portugal
Many, many eyebrows were raised after Dani Sordo’s mediocre peformance in Sweden, and those that weren’t raised then, rose after Rally Mexico – can he cope with the pressure and can he produce results worthy of the championship winning team?
The thing is, we still don’t know. What we know is, Dani is fast and can produce stunning results, but it’s something like chance-on-hit for him, he lacks a lot in the consistency department, and as we all know, that’s what counts in the long run.
We can safely say, he blew it in Mexico, but that’s ancient history now – there is another chance for Sordo to shine, Rally de Portugal. And he is off to a good start, judging by the fastest time set on the qualifying stage.
On a short, 5 kilometer stage Sordo was 7 tenths faster than Volkswagen’s Sebastien Ogier, closely followed by another Polo driver, Jari-Matti Latvala, further tenth down. Mads Ostberg in fourth was fastest of the Qatar drivers, 0.1 slower than Latvala.
Based on these results, leading WRC crews will select starting positions for tomorrows first leg of Rally de Portugal at 13.00 local time. The question on everyone’s lips is, what position and tyres to pick for tomorrow. Mads Ostberg revealed part of his strategy for today, when he tweeted that he opted for harder type for qualy session, and believes others were on softs.
Qualifying Results
- Dani Sordo 3:01.6
- Sébastien Ogier +0.7
- Jari-Matti Latvala +0.8
- Mads Østberg +0.9
- Mikko Hirvonen +1.3
- Evgeny Novikov +1.6
- Thierry Neuville +2.0
- Andreas Mikkelsen +6.0
- Nasser Al-Attiyah +6.6
- Khalid Al-Qassimi +6.6
- Martin Prokop +7.8
- Michal Kosciuszko +10.4
- Dennis Kuipers +12.2
