Neuville’s nightmare gifts Ogier Central European Rally lead

Neuville, hunting down his first drivers' title this weekend, began day three with a slender 6.4sec lead. That advantage was shaved down to just 0.8sec after two slippery asphalt stages in Germany and Austria.

However, disaster struck on the third stage at Schärdinger Innviertel, where the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID driver spun twice in quick succession. The second spin was particularly costly, as Neuville struggled to extract his car from a concrete drainage ditch and lost nearly 40sec, tumbling to fourth place overall.

Ogier, the quickest to capitalise on Neuville’s misfortune, reclaimed the top spot for the first time since Friday morning. After initially slipping to third behind Hyundai’s Ott Tänak on the opening stage, he surged back ahead of the Estonian and won the final test of the morning to reach midday service with a 4.6sec lead.

Elfyn Evans, Ogier's Toyota team-mate, moved up to third and now trails Tänak by 3.7sec. Neuville, meanwhile, is 25.7sec adrift of the lead and faces an uphill battle. To clinch the championship this weekend, he needs to outscore Tänak by two points while ensuring Ogier doesn’t gain more than 10 points on him, and Evans no more than 15.

“My pace notes were too fast,” Neuville explained afterwards. “Obviously in the dry it would have worked, but my pace notes were too optimistic, and the car never turned because it was too greasy, then we decided to go into a field and got stuck.”

Adrien Fourmaux was another casualty of the morning. The M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID driver retired following SS10 with a front differential issue that compromised his car’s handling, leading to two off-road excursions.

Takamoto Katsuta held onto fifth place despite losing time after running wide into a field on SS11. He led Sami Pajari’s similar Toyota by over a minute, with Grégoire Munster slotting into seventh.

Nikolay Gryazin, the leading driver in WRC2, was eighth, while fellow Rally2 competitors Oliver Solberg and Filip Mareš completed the top 10.