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Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena produced another masterful display today, making a mockery of their lack of recent experience on wet tarmac as the pair remained locked in a tight battle for the podium places, whilst #craigbreen and Scott Martin ended the day in ninth position after they lost time with a couple of spins. Meanwhile, Khalid Al Qassimi and Chris Patterson ended day two in nineteenth position, having focused on learning to cope with the tricky, low-grip conditions, with which they are relatively unfamiliar.
Whereas usually the gaps on the Catalan tarmac stages are very small, the rain forecast on today's second leg (121.80km over seven stages) suggested the crews were in for an incident-packed day, where tyre choice might prove decisive.
Having not competed at a #rally in the wet for five years, Sébastien Loeb initially called upon his immense experience this morning as he got used to the conditions again, despite not really having the right tyre set-up (five Michelin soft slicks). Once he had got his bearings, the nine-time world #rally champion decided to keep the same tyres for the afternoon, despite the roads varying from damp and slippery to totally soaked. Yet again, he displayed his incredible ability to adapt to the conditions! He moved up to third place with a stage win on SS12 (21.26km) as the battle raged around him for the drivers' title, ending the day just 3.3s behind the second-placed driver and 8.0s off the leader with just the short final leg to go.
Further information in the press release to download
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