CROATIA RALLY, OGIER TAKES THE WIN THREAT OF RAIN NEVER MATERIALISED
Weather forecast proved wrong and on Saturday drivers had to deal with a mix of hard, soft and wet
The Frenchman came out on top in a closely contested rally, with the turning point coming on SS 18
Testoni: “We witnessed a really interesting and close fought rally. The tyres were well suited to all situations and choices”
Sebastien Ogier took his Toyota to a first win of 2024, making him the fourth driver to win a rally from the four WRC events held so far. The multiple world champion came home ahead of Elfyn Evans (Toyota) and Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) at the end of what had been a close contest all weekend long. The key moment came on SS 18, when Neuville and Evans, both ahead of the eventual winner up to that point, suffered damage to their cars, having gone off the road at two different slippery points on the route. These two episodes summed up the slippery nature and dirt present on the Croatian roads, particularly on Sunday morning, which made for challenging conditions for drivers and tyres, despite the absence of the rain that had been forecast.
THE CHALLENGE
In fact, the rain that was expected to characterise the Croatia Rally did not materialise, although its very absence made itself felt, if not in the way expected. Contrary to the forecasts, it never rained throughout the entire weekend, but it did influence tyre choice for the drivers, as on Saturday, they all took on board a good number of wet and soft tyres, which dealt with the completely dry conditions without too many problems. However, in the end, the close fight for the lead on Saturday between Neuville, Evans and Ogier was only partially affected by this factor. The gaps between them remained pretty much unchanged, regardless of the tyres used.
Tyre strategies from driver to driver varied considerably over the three days, with the cars always coming out with a combination of hard and soft, with the addition of the wet tyre in the two sections on Saturday.
PIRELLI QUOTE
Terenzio Testoni, Pirelli Activity Manager: “We witnessed a wonderful and thrilling rally in which it was easy to make mistakes. Congratulations to all the winners in the various categories. From a technical standpoint, the rally produced the difficulties we were expecting, both in terms of the poor grip from the road surface and the dirt that was particularly significant on Sunday. The tyres responded well to the various demands placed on them, even when the choices made by the crews turned out to be wrong, because of the misleading weather forecast. The strength and wear resistance of the tyres meant the event went off smoothly, even when the wheel system was damaged several times on various cars. In fact, the use of the entire range of allocated tyres, including the wets, meant that all the cars had new tyres available to tackle the challenge of Super Sunday, which in the end was decided by two mistakes, completely understandable when one considers the level of competition and the rally still to be decided with three stages still to go.”
WRC2 AND JWRC
Nicolaj Grazin ran out the comfortable winner of WRC2 in his Citroen C3 Rally 2, controlling the rally from start to finish. Second and third places went to Yohan Rossel (Citroen C3) and Pepe Lopez (Skoda Fabia RS). In Junior WRC the win went to Romet Jürgenson (Ford Fiesta Rally3).
Here below a chart summary of the Croatia Rally
