ADAMO DEALS WITH THE INEVITABLE QUESTIONS
The helicopter shots that opened each broadcast of this year’s Rally Italia Sardegna showed the beauty of a hillside town and the rustic charm of the island. Whether intentionally or not, the sequence mirrored the credits to Italy’s celebrated TV export, Inspector Montalbano, tales of a police detective who navigates the grey area in which the law does not always favour victims or the community. The delicacy with which Montalbano must think and act is often undermined by the constant badgering of local press and the inability of his team to perform their tasks to his satisfaction. Several parallels could be found with Hyundai team principal Andrea Adamo over the course of the weekend, as the fortunes of his drivers ebbed and flowed.
Toyota’s Tommi Makinen was unequivocal: no team orders, even with the manufacturers’ title so delicately poised. Adamo could not afford such directness when his fastest car was the only one not fighting desperately to stay in the drivers’ title race. “You know, we always manage the strategy to get our objectives,” he said. “We always say the manufacturers’ championship is our main objective.”
It was the honest answer of a man navigating the grey area of his drivers’ expectations. Ott Tanak, with the most points coming into the event, languished after the opening morning while Thierry
Neuville played snakes and ladders with his tyre strategy. “Maybe the problem will sort itself – maybe we have to do something, maybe not…” Adamo mused publicly. “Whatever it will be I will do.”
For his part, Sordo greeted the news that Neuville had ended day two in second place by mentioning only the pressure being applied by Sebastien Ogier. Neuville, though, cheekily dropped his face mask to show his elation. “If I do the job, they will do the job,” said the Belgian brightly, which sent the press pack back to Adamo with renewed vigour.
“I know what you are going to ask me, ‘Do-you-will-switch-position-and-and…’” the Italian said, imitating his pursuers. “And if you don’t mind, I would answer the same as the others.”
He weathered the storm in a manner that would have brought a tear of pride to Montalbano’s eye: ever courteous and occasionally explosive: “You don’t need to be Einstein to understand that is difficult to play a bit, huh?”
And, like the fictional policemen, his team conjured a result with no losers. “I don’t know if I deserve them or they deserve me,” Adamo concluded.
disaster struck. The rear end stepped out just a little too far and snagged a tree, spinning the Yaris through 180 degrees. It then hit another tree square on at the rear, ripping off the right side of the car, making a mess of its rollcage and the rest of the structure, but its crew escaped unharmed. Team principal Tommi Makinen looked shaken when inspecting the wreckage.
Rovanpera’s crash left championship leader Evans battling with Suninen just out of the potential podium places. The Welshman stands atop the championship table thanks to consistency rather than outright speed, and he was sticking to the gameplan once again as tyre management became a major preoccupation. “We had a lot of movement in the tyre but actually the wear was not as bad as we thought it would be,” he said. “So we probably had a little bit of margin to go a bit harder.”
No such margin was available to either Neuville or Ogier, both of whom were
“WE PROBABLY HAD A LITTLE BIT OF MARGIN TO GO A BIT HARDER”
on the ragged edge. Neuville was kicking himself for running a less-than-optimal tyre choice once again. Although he had abandoned the second spare, he had chosen to stick with mediums all round in the afternoon when Toyota had worked out that a medium/hard mix was the way to go.
All of this dropped him back behind Ogier to the tune of 1.5s at the overnight halt. For Sordo, having Ogier behind him was no problem as it avoided the potential question of having to slow down in order to assist Neuville’s championship chances. “I will try to help myself to win in the rally, and the team, you know?” he said. “I don’t think these people need help. I just come here to do a rally like the others and I’m happy.”
After two days of sunshine in the mid-twenties, cooler conditions greeted the runners on Sunday morning, an overcast sky dropping ambient temperatures by
10C from the first two days.
A single loop of just two stages awaited, which was to be run twice through the day. Ogier and Neuville made the leap into hyperspace from their very first kilometre. Ogier took first blood, 0.2s faster than Neuville but 12.1s faster than Sordo. Neuville then won the next from Sordo by 0.8s and 1.6s faster than Ogier. The Frenchman claimed the penultimate stage 1.6s in front of Neuville, closing to just 9.2s from Sordo.
“It’s never safe and I don’t know,
I don’t understand the times,” Sordo said. “They are really, really fast in this stage. I am really surprised.”
Then came the powerstage and
Tanak played his joker. He had kept a low profile since the opening day, but the five bonus powerstage points offered a lifeline to his title defence and he grasped it with both hands.
Neuville was faster than Tanak on the split times, and desperately needed a full score both to help pull clear of
Tanak and to close on the Toyota drivers’ scores, but brake issues intervened, dropping him 0.7s behind Tanak and costing him a point.
Ogier came next with his Yaris WRC, which was several yards past the limit as he wrestled it like a 1980s Group B car. It was mesmerising to watch but was only third fastest and dropped him back into third overall.
Sordo then closed the stage carefully but his time was just fast enough: 5.1s was the final margin of victory over Neuville. It pushed Hyundai back past Toyota in the manufacturers’ standings, and that was mission accomplished as far as Hyundai team boss Andrea Adamo was concerned.
Muted celebrations then followed out of respect for the loss of Sordo’s countrywoman, co-driver Laura Salvo, in competition on the Rally Vidreiro Centro de Portugal on Saturday. Sordo,
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