Ogier fastest on the wet Shakedown in Spain

The eight-time world rally champion Sébastien Ogier tops the Thursday morning shakedown in RallyRACC Catalunya – Costa Daurada as two Toyota Gazoo Racing cars are within the top three after the session.

Some rain showers were greeting the drivers during this morning and tire strategy played a big role throughout the session, the Toyota drivers were the only ones in the Rally1 category that ran with the Pirelli soft tires while the rest of the teams selected the hard compound on the 4.21 kilometers Coll de La Teixeta Shakedown stage early on.

Ogier edged the Toyota Gazoo Racing NG driver Takamoto Katsuta by just nine-tenths of a second on his third and final run, while Pierre-Louis Loubet, who ran a total of six times on the stage slotted in third with an impressive time of just 1.2 seconds slower than Ogier when he went out with soft tires. The M-Sport Ford World Rally Team driver split the two Toyotas of the 2022 world champion Kalle Rovanperä and Elfyn Evans, who posted fourth and fifth fastest times respectively.

Credit: Jaanus Ree / Red Bull Content Pool

M-Sport´s Gus Greensmith also went for softs on his later attempts and he managed to take a sixth fastest time on his fourth run, meanwhile, teammate Adrien Fourmaux, who returns to the line-up after a two-month hiatus ended with seventh fastest after having a slow opening run.

Craig Breen also driving for M-Sport was the ninth fastest and local two WRC2 drivers of Pepe López and Alejandro Cachón claimed eighth and tenth fastest times respectively.

All Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT drivers were struggling on the shakedown and none of them reached any top ten times with Ott Tänak coming out best with 11th place.

Official shakedown result (top 10)

Pos.	Number	Driver / Co-driver	Nat.	Team	Car	Class	Time
1.	#1	Sébastien Ogier / Benjamin Veillas	France	Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT	Toyota GR Yaris Rally1	Rally1	2:40.1
2.	#18	Takamoto Katsuta / Aaron Johnston	Japan / Ireland	Toyota Gazoo Racing NG WRT	Toyota GR Yaris Rally1	Rally1	2:41.0
3.	#7	Pierre-Louis Loubet / Vincent Landais	France	M-Sport Ford WRT	Ford Puma Rally1	Rally1	2:41.3
4.	#69	Kalle Rovanperä / Jonne Halttunen	Finland	Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT	Toyota GR Yaris Rally1	Rally1	2:41.5
5.	#33	Elfyn Evans / Scott Martin	United Kingdom	Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT	Toyota GR Yaris Rally1	Rally1	2:41.6
6.	#44	Gus Greensmith / Jonas Andersson	United Kingdom / Sweden	M-Sport Ford WRT	Ford Puma Rally1	Rally1	2:42.6
7.	#16	Adrien Fourmaux / Alexandre Coria	France	M-Sport Ford WRT	Ford Puma Rally1	Rally1	2:46.1
8.	#26	Pepe López / Borja Rozada	Spain	Hyundai Motor España	Hyundai i20 N Rally2	WRC2	2:48.8
9.	#42	Craig Breen / Paul Nagle	Ireland	M-Sport Ford WRT	Ford Puma Rally1	Rally1	2:50.4
10.	#29	Alejandro Cachón / Alejandro “Jandrín” López Fernández	Spain	Citroën Rally Team	Citroen C3 Rally2	WRC2	2:52.3