Ogier moves forward from Italy WRC agony

The Toyota star started the Wolf Power Stage with 6.2 seconds in hand, but a tyre losing pressure towards the end of the test cost him time and he eventually missed out by just two-tenths of a second.

While he might not have walked away with a third consecutive WRC win and the opportunity to become the most successful driver in Sardinia’s WRC history, he did lead the Alghero-based rally for 12 of 16 stages and he won more stages than any of his rivals.

“I think I can still be happy with the weekend I’ve done,” he said. “Sometimes motorsport just doesn’t go your way. We will come back and try to keep up this level of performance we’ve had."

Ogier will return to his GR Yaris Rally1 for the WRC’s next event, Rally Poland later this month.

Talking about the final-stage drama in Italy, he added: “We knew it could be tough with some stages that are very rough and maybe not the most suited to us. Still, I think we were doing a good enough job to secure the win, but unfortunately we started to lose tyre pressure three kilometres from the end [of SS16].

“The conditions were very extreme in this [Wolf] Power Stage, even worse than we have seen there before, and I don’t think there was much that I could have done differently. It’s something that’s never easy to take, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really change anything in terms of the overall points for the team.”