Sebastien Ogier defends the lead at the Rally Monte-Carlo on Saturday morning – Fourmaux displaces Evans from second place, Neuville in trouble again.
Sebastien Ogier (Toyota) defended the lead at the Rally Monte-Carlo, the 2025 World Rally Championship (WRC) season opener, on Saturday morning. In mostly dry conditions – light rain only set in towards the end of the twelfth special stage – the Frenchman slightly extended his lead to 17.2 seconds.
“I tried to control the risk, which is not easy in Monte Carlo,” said Ogier on Rally.TV. ”In these conditions, you have to be prepared to lose some time. That was not so easy in places, [with] the rain that started at the end.”
Ogier got a new rival in the morning. Adrien Fourmaux continued his strong and flawless performance in his Hyundai debut, displacing Elfyn Evans (Toyota) from second place. 2.8 seconds separate the Frenchman and the Welshman after twelve of 18 special stages.
Engine problem slows Neuville down
Fourth is Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota). Although the Finn reduced his gap to the podium places, he is still 45.4 seconds behind the leader. By contrast, his lead over fifth-placed Ott Tänak (Hyundai) is just one second. Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari, two other Toyota drivers, follow in sixth and seventh place respectively.
For Thierry Neuville (Hyundai), the series of breakdowns continued on Saturday morning. Immediately after the start of the tenth special stage, his Hyundai was obviously lacking in engine power and the car did not accelerate as expected. Neuville stopped during the stage and performed a complete electrical system restart, which seemed to fix the problem.
Nevertheless, the reigning world champion lost almost a minute and is now more than five minutes behind the leader in eighth place overall. Yohan Rossel (Citroen), the leader of the WRC 2 classification, and M-Sport rookie Joshua McErlean (Ford) complete the top 10.
First WP victory for Gregoire Munster
There was a first on the tenth stage, “La Motte-Chalancon/Saint-Nazaire 1”. Gregoire Munster (Ford) won a stage for the first time in his WRC career. The driver from Luxembourg benefited from an electrical defect that caused him to break down on his way to the service park on Friday evening.
This meant that he was the first driver to take to the stages on Saturday, and he found the road conditions to be the cleanest. Munster used this to his advantage and was 0.8 seconds faster than Ogier.
In the afternoon, the three stages from the morning will be repeated.
