Dani Sordo (Hyundai) was fastest in the Rally Portugal shakedown, held this morning. The stage was close to Baltar, around fifty kilometres from Porto. M-Sport’s Sebastien Ogier was 0.1sec behind the Spaniard, while Jari-Matti Latvala gave third time (+0.2sec to Sordo’s).
“It was a really good morning, I’m happy with the car,” said the Spaniard. “There’s nothing really different on the car compared to the last round in Argentina, but I made small changes in shakedown in the suspension which went in a good direction.”
Dani Sordo was fastest in Rally Portugal shakedown
Kris Meeke was Citroen’s best performer, setting the fourth fastest time.
“The shakedown stage was pretty artificial, especially the final section, which was held on what looked like an old rallycross track”, Meeke commented. “We improved the set-up with a few minor changes, but you have to bear in mind that this stage doesn’t look anything like what we’ll be tackling over the next few days. The main thing was to finish the morning in a positive, confident frame of mind. And that’s exactly what we did!”
Later this afternoon, the crews will drive onto the Guimarães podium for the ceremonial start of the rally. The first stage will be this evening on the Lousada rallycross circuit from 7.03pm (GMT+1). The cars will then enter parc ferme for the night.
Final shakedown times @rallydeportugal
1.Sordo
2.Ogier +0.1
3.Latvala +0.2
4.Meeke +0.3
5.Evans +0.6
6.Ostberg +0.8
7.Tanak +0.9#WRC pic.twitter.com/nU1AaGQOFy— Jari-Matti Latvala (@JariMattiWRC) 18 May 2017
