Sebastien Loeb extended his lead on the second leg of the 2007 Vodafone Rally de Portugal by winning each of the day’s six stages, to end the day with a 40.5-second margin over BP-Ford’s Marcus Gronholm. Gronholm’s team-mate Mikko Hirvonen maintained his third place throughout the day, 13 seconds ahead of Subaru’s Petter Solberg.
Overnight rain and early morning drizzle clearly fazed the drivers as they prepared to start the second leg and tyre choice was the main talking point. However, the low cloud and rain soon dissipated and was replaced by broken sunshine. Loeb started the day with soft compound tyres, his theory being that they would work best on the damp and slippery conditions. Gronholm, on the other hand, gambled on the weather, and the stages, drying and opted for a harder compound, predicting that they would last better than Loeb’s.
As it transpired, Loeb pulled another tyre-choice masterstroke and he took the stage win on each of the three stages, clawing back a five second deficit mid-stage on the 30Km Silves/Ourique test to win by two seconds.
Mikko Hirvonen, in third, was slower than fourth-placed Petter Solberg on the opening test of the day but not enough to jeopardise his position. Even when he went off the road briefly on the second stage, it was not enough for Solberg to close up and the pair was separated by 13.3 seconds arriving at the mid-day service.
Other than stalling twice on the opening stage, Dani Sordo had an uneventful morning, maintaining fifth while Jari-Matti Latvala held onto sixth place, despite going off the road on the first stage and hitting a tree. He also complained that his tyre choice was not ideal for the conditions and that he should have taken more of a cut in the tread.
Manfred Stohl was complaining of handling and traction problems with his Citroen Xsara WRC but then went off the road on the last of the morning’s stages and lost almost six minutes getting back on. Ironically, the second Subaru of Chris Atkinson went off in exactly the same spot but he was not so lucky, unable to get back on the road and hence, retired from the leg.
Daniel Carlsson and Henning Solberg were enjoying a good battle, which eventually saw Carlsson reach the mid-day service with a 14.9-second advantage, now starting to really enjoy his Xsara WRC. Gigi Galli was also on the wrong tyres and to compound his error, he took a wrong turn in the third stage and lost more time. Andreas Mikkelsen was gradually building speed and confidence on the event, while Armindo Araújo hit a bank on the second stage and felt there was a problem with his car, although he was unable to identify it.
Following the mid-day service, Loeb was once again fastest out of the blocks, winning each of the three stages, a second run of the morning’s. This time round, he took the harder tyre and it was again the right choice, with Gronholm opting for too soft a compound and suffering excessive wear over the now dry stages. He also had a small off on the middle stage of the afternoon’s loop, handing 14 seconds to the Frenchman.
Hirvonen was also on too soft tyres and complained that he felt the car moving as if the tyres were worn, although they were not as bad as he feared. Solberg, by contrast, wasn’t complaining about his tyres but his suspension, saying it was too soft for his liking and that he wasn’t getting the grip he needed.
Dani Sordo was another driver who maintained station throughout the afternoon, despite a scare when his co-driver’s door refused to close properly at the start of the afternoon’s first stage and then his own door came open in the stage. However, he resolved the problem on the road section immediately following and it didn’t reoccur.
Jari-Matti Latvala was feeling much more confident on the drier stages and began by saying that he would try to catch Sordo. But with a 50-second deficit, he eventually decided to play safe and concentrate on driving his own rally and waiting to see what would happen on the final leg.
Henning Solberg and Daniel Carlsson’s battle continued, eventually going the way of Solberg, who went through the middle stage faster to end the day with a 6.6-second advantage over Carlsson, who was now complaining that his Citroen Xsara WRC felt nervous and lacked grip.
Gigi Galli holds ninth place at the end of the second day, reporting that his tyres were working better than in the morning but he was still unable to find the speed he felt should be there. Manfred Stohl continued with a car which understeered too much for his liking and holds tenth place, after the time loss off the road this morning. Local hero Armindo Araújo maintained his twelfth place overall, just behind Andreas Mikkelsen, saying he was happier with the way the car was handling after changes to the set-up at the mid-day service but he still had further changes to make.
In the Junior Rally Championship category, Urmo Aava continued to dominate, taking the stage win in the class on each of the morning’s stages. However, rival P-G Andersson took the three wins in the afternoon, despite having tyres which he described as ‘destroyed’. Jozef Beres was third fastest on all but one of the day’s stages, with Patrik Sandell taking third on the other. This means that Beres ends the day third in the Junior category, more than three minutes ahead of Jaan Molder, who complained of suspension problems in the afternoon. Patrik Flodin suffered brake problems in the morning in his Group N Subaru but ends the day leading the category, ahead of Rui Madeira and Bruno Magalhães in the returning Peugeot S2000 207.
The third and final leg of the event takes the crews into the hills to the north of Faro for two loops of two stages, before returning to the Algarve Stadium for the second run through the superspecial stage and the finish. The cars start the first stage of the day at 08.07hrs and the finish ceremony takes place at 14.45.
