Mikkelsen has a firm grip of second place in the WRC

The Norwegian’s Volkswagen Motorsport teammate, Sebastien Ogier, won on home soil and took a big step towards his fourth consecutive world title. Ahead of the three last WRC rounds, Andreas Mikkelsen is the only one who, in theory, could take the title from him. With a third place and two bonus points from the closing powerstage, Andreas did what he had to do this weekend.

“I was hoping for victory and three bonus points on the last stage, but I did a few tiny mistakes in a couple of hairpins” said Andreas, who was only beaten by Kris Meeke with five tenths. But two bonus points were still important.

In the overall classification, Andreas is in second place, 68 points behind Ogier. He has 15 points down to third, where we find Belgian Thierry Neuville, who finished second in Corsica and decreased the gap to Andreas with just one point. After a third place in the championship both in 2014 and 2015, Norway’s leading rally driver now has a good chance of a better result this year.

“I’m very pleased that we’re holding our position in the championship and that Neuville only took one point from us. With that in mind, third place and two bonus points on the last stage were very important” said Andreas.

He and co-driver Anders Jæger struggled a bit on Friday’s stages and were in fourth place. But on Saturday, everything fell into place and they fought themselves up to third place. With only two stages on Sunday’s schedule, they realized that it would be difficult to climb further up on the leaderboard. Instead, they focused on being as quick as possible on the powerstage.

“All in all, I feel like we had a good event. It was great to be back on the podium again as well. It feels like it was ages ago” said Andreas with a smile. However, just a couple of months ago, he won Rally Poland.

The next WRC event takes place in Spain in two weeks and that is a rally that Andreas has very fond memories from. Last year he took the first WRC victory in his career at Rally Spain. This past weekend’s solid driving has made him confident going into the three last events of the season.

“I think Rally Spain will be really good. Previous years I have struggled a little on the gravel stages, but been fast on tarmac. So my goal for this year is to speed up on the gravel and if I can do that, it should be a fun weekend” said Andreas.