Skip to main content

Volkswagen Takes Top Three Spots in Driver’s Standings After Finland

The 80th running of the much loved Finnish Rally was by no means an easy one for Volkswagen Motorsport, but after all was said an done the team’s three drivers are now in first, second, and third in the driver’s championship.

The Finnish rally ended best for Jari-Matti Latvala, who often does well at his home rally. The Finn set the average speed record last year and was hoping for a good result to propel him upwards in the driver’s standings.

Latvala earned that result, finishing second, behind Citreon’s Kris Meeke. The result gets him from fourth to third in the driver’s championship, rounding out the top three.

“Second place and a point on the Power Stage is a very good haul,” said Latvala after the rally. “It is always very special to drive here on home soil. We now move on to the asphalt season, which was remarkably good to me last year. We must now back up this weekend’s performance in Germany.”

Rally Finland 2016

Sebastien Ogier, unfortunately, was unable to score points this weekend, the first time he has failed to do so this season. The championship leader was saddled with the role of sweeper. As the WRC points leader, he has to start rallies first, which is a major disadvantage on gravel roads.

Heading into a hairpin bend on Friday, Ogier slid off the road and into a ditch. With the help of some fans watching the race, they managed to get the Polo R WRC back onto the road, but only after losing 16 minutes. Fortunately for him, his lead was big enough that he still has a 45 point buffer over the competition.

Rally Finland 2016

Andreas Mikkelsen, at that point, was in third place in the rally, and in second place on the season. Unfortunately, though, he was saddled with sweeping duties after the Ogier’s off, and the difficult conditions meant he slipped down into seventh place. He still scored points, and as a result hangs onto second place for the season.

“All in all, Anders and I can be happy with seventh place,” said Mikkelsen after the race. “It was difficult once we suddenly had to open the route on Saturday. We did our very best, but starting first really did not make life easy. I was driving on the very limit all the time on some of the stages, but my times were still low.”

Fortunately for Volkswagen Motorsport, the starting order will be less of an issue for the next three rallies, all of which are on tarmac. The next rally is in Germany, and starts on August 18th

After all is said and done, Ogier (143 pts) is in first, Mikkelsen (98 pts) is in second, and Latvala (87 pts) leapfrogs past Hyundai’s Hayden Paddon (84 pts) and into third place overall this season.

Rally Finland 2016

The post Volkswagen Takes Top Three Spots in Driver’s Standings After Finland appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2av3lnG
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster Review

“Supercars just don’t excite me anymore.” These words, spoken to me over a month ago by another journalist, friend, and (so-called) enthusiast were echoing in my head for far too long, but they’ve finally been drowned out. Drowned out by the wail of a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 engine mounted in the middle of the new Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster. My friend’s point is that back in the good old days, there was a crop of supercars that captured the imagination with amazing style, sounds, performance, and more. Today, it seems like everything is capable of supercar performance, with large luxury sedans outdoing some of the best and most dedicated teams of car nuts, while former pillars of automotive excellence are suddenly pumping out family-friendly SUVs. Beyond that, another league of supercars, dubbed hypercars have cropped up with hybrid gas-electric powertrains that make magical things happen quickly, but at the cost of the acoustic drama, visual flair, and engag...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...
Post a Comment
Read more