PERFORMANCE OF THE DAY: MAKE OR BREAK FOR FORD
Three Fords stood out yesterday at the end of stage 11: Mattias Ekstrom, Romain Dumas and Carlos Sainz, which was ideal this morning for Nani Roma, who was second overall with a 10-minute lead over his closest rival, Sébastien Loeb. The Frenchman was the 10th driver to start and so enjoyed an ideal position to hunt down his pray, with the hope of swooping in on the Catalan in the overall rankings to put his Sandrider behind the one driven by Nasser Al Attiyah on the eve of the finish. This fact had not escaped the American constructor’s team, which requested Romain Dumas to park up after the first metres of the special and wait for his team leader, so that he could follow him like his shadow throughout the stage. The Frenchman, driving a privately run Raptor, threw himself into this role up until the finishing line, which Roma crossed on three wheels, with his front axle unit dragging along the ground. After completing the special at 14:01'14’’, Nani had 2 hours 45 minutes to reach the bivouac in Yanbu 183 kilometres away. The Ford teams went about carrying out a ‘transplant’ between the two Raptors, which they completed within an on hour. This left Roma with less than one and a half hours to complete the link route before 16.47. Like in a Hollywood blockbuster, Roma ran out of fuel and had to rely on Laia Sanz towing him to the entrance to the bivouac where he clocked in just one minute late. After a few tears to evacuate the stress, Nani realised he had saved his 2nd place on the podium, in spite of a one-minute penalty. Since good news always comes in batches, before this thrilling finale, Mattias Ekstrom had managed, after opening the special, to finish with a time faster than Loeb's, placing his Raptor on the overall podium 29 seconds ahead of the Dacia. On returning to the shores of the Red Sea, although they surfed on the razor’s edge, Ford did much better than avoid failure…
