In the FIA World Rally Championship, points for third and additional points for winning the Power Stage see Ogier pull out a 64 point advantage over second-placed Dani Sordo. Despite zero points in Italy, Andreas Mikkelsen holds third, one point behind the Spaniard. In the Manufacturers’ Championship, Volkswagen Motorsport is ahead of Hyundai Motorsport, 70 points separating the rivals.

Today’s route was by far the shortest of the event and took in two loops of two stages covering just 40.26 competitive kilometres, culminating in the all-important Power Stage. Neuville started the day with a 16.1 second advantage over Latvala and was able to immediately extend his lead with victory in today’s first test. Another win in the same repeated stage cemented the Belgian’s position at the head of the leaderboard and saw him collect his second WRC victory in fine style. Without a mistake from Neuville, Latvala was all too aware that the deficit was too great to overcome with the kilometres remaining. The Finn was however delighted to score good points after a very mixed start to the season. Ogier made a couple of small mistakes today but fought hard throughout the event to overcome the difficulty of running first on the road and finished an impressive third on one of the toughest events of the season.

Behind the leading trio, Dani Sordo had a risk-free run to the finish, the Spaniard in a comfortable fourth ahead of Ott Tanak. Eric Camilli has enjoyed a great event, delivering consistently competitive times and also securing his first WRC stage victory. The Frenchman finished sixth ahead of Henning Solberg who had to complete today’s route with broken suspension.

Teemu Suninen, driving less powerful machinery, finished a fine eighth overall and claimed the FIA WRC 2 Championship win. He led a one-two in the category for Skoda, with Jan Kopecky second and ninth overall. The final point-scoring position was claimed by Karl Kruuda in Ford’s R5 machinery. Fabio Andolfi won the FIA WRC 3 Championship in his Peugeot 208 R2.

The seventh round of the FIA World Rally Championship takes the contenders to the high-speed gravel roads of Rally Poland (30 June-3 July).

Rally Italia Sardegna – Provisional Final Classification