PoloDriver

Volkswagen Motorsport once again took to the rally stages on the Rally Italia Sardegna on 18-21 October, and once again Sébastien Ogier turned the tables on the established WRC competition in his Škoda Fabia S2000. Outperforming the entire group of the WRC competitors on the fifth special stage with a time of 10m 16.1s, Ogier, along with co-driver Julien Ingrassia, finished in fifth place overall in Sardinia, as well as claiming the best position to have ever been achieved by an S2000-class car on an FIA World Rally Championship event.

‘All the teams had opted for soft tyres in the morning. Before starting on the special stage I noticed that the tyres of the WRC cars had already heavily worn – I knew that this was the chance of clinching a very good result. I tried to take it easy on my tyres while being as fast as possible,’ revealed Ogier. The 28-year-old continued to maintain a fast pace and from the eighth to the eleventh special stage, was running in fourth place among the more powerful WRC competitors. After having dropped to sixth place in-between, Ogier launched a final attack on Saturday afternoon and on the 14th special stage took position five.

The French duo’s team mates Andreas Mikkelsen and Ola Fløene completed the strong Volkswagen Motorsport performance on the Costa Smeralda by taking seventh place, scoring WRC points for the second time in 2012. ‘An outstanding showing by Sébastien underlines his class as a driver and his cleverness. He recognised the situation that the tracks in Sardinia at times put a very heavy strain on the tyres and made perfect use of it. The engineers and mechanics also provided both driver pairings with perfect cars through the entire rally,’ said an enthused and very pleased Volkswagen Motorsport Director Jost Capito.