Sebastien Ogier wins Tour de Corse for the first time in a career

  • 2016 Tour de Corse, Sebastien Ogier
  • 2016 WRC, Tour de Corse, Ogier
  • 2016 Tour de Corse podium

Sebastien Ogier (Volkswagen Motorsport) wins Tour de Corse, the French round of the 2016 World Rally Championship, to make a big step forward on a way to his fourth consecutive world’s title. For Ogier, it was fourth win of the season and his maiden victory at the Mediterranean island.

Thierry Neuville (Hyundai Motorsport) and Andreas Mikkelsen (Volkswagen) completed the podium at Corsica, after ten special stages with a total length of 390 kilometers.

2016 Tour de Corse, Kris Meeke

Kris Meeke has won three of ten special stages

It’s easy to misjudge one of 4,800 corners

Tour de Corse is one of the world’s classic rallies, widely known as ‘Rally of 10,000 corners’. In a fact, it has about 4,800 corners, which were a big challenge for all the crews. For some of them, some corners were more demanding than others and caused plenty off-road excursions. One of the main victims of Corsican corners was Citroen’s Kris Meeke, who was the only man who can catch Ogier.

Meeke was close to Ogier in the opening two stages on Friday, but the puncture on SS3 dropped him back. On Saturday, Meeke re-started and won the Special Stage 5, but he misjudged one corner and hit the three on SS6. On thelast day, Meeke re-started again and won both Sunday’s stages, the 53-km long marathon stage Antisanti – Poggio di Nazza and 10.42-km long Power Stage. At the end of rally, Meeke finished 16th.

2016 WRC, Tour de Corse, Ogier

Sebastien Ogier wins for the first time at Corsica

Mikkelsen still has mathematical chances

Other drivers couldn’t follow Ogier’s rhytm and second-placed Neuville ended the event with 46.4 seconds gap behind the Frenchman. Mikkelsen finished 23.6 seconds behind Neuville. Other points scorers in the overall classification are Jari-Matti Latvala (Volkswagen), Craig Breen (Citroen), Hayden Paddon (Hyundai), Dani Sordo (Hyundai), Eric Camilli (Ford), Mads Ostberg (Ford) and Ott Tanak (Ford). Elfyn Evans (Ford Fiesta R5) was the best among WRC 2 drivers, taking the class victory ahead of Jan Kopecky (Škoda Fabia R5). Laurent Pellier is the winner in the WRC 3 and JWRC competition.

Three more rounds are in the calendar (Rally Catalunya, Wales Rally and Rally Australia), with maximum of 84 points to offer. Ogier has 65-point advantage over Mikkelsen, so the Norwegian still has a mathematical chances to win the title, but we all know it would be a ‘mission impossible’.


Check the full results of Tour de Corse


Photos: Volkswagen Motorsport, Citroen Racing,

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