Neuville takes overnight WRC Rallye Monte Carlo lead after Ogier mistake

Neuville takes overnight WRC Rallye Monte Carlo lead after Ogier mistake

24th January 2025 0 By Kamron Kent

Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville has taken the overnight lead for the World Rally Championship’s Rallye Monte-Carlo after Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier made a mistake on stage three.

Feature image credit: Jaanus Ree / Red Bull Content Pool

The WRC 2025 season was ignited in the dark, around the French Alps, and highlighted by the red flares by fans who were in attendance on the opening day of the season. 

A total of 54.16km of competitive terrain made up the first day of Rallye Monte Carlo with stage two being the longest of the trio of stages at 21.18km.

Ogier was the early dominant force in the opening two stages, laying down a marker, but the event bit back on stage three as he ran wide on a left-hand corner. Thankfully, the eight-time world champion was able to keep the throttle pinned to get his car out of trouble. 

As a result, Ogier lost the rally lead to Neuville. The defending world champion now leads the rally with two seconds in hand over Toyota’s, second-placed, Elfyn Evans as Ogier completes the podium positions in third, 12.8s behind. 

Hyundai’s Ott Tanak and Adrien Fourmaux rounded out the top five, in fourth and fifth respectively, a maximum of 30 seconds behind their leading teammate. 

Two-time world champion and returning full-time driver, Kalle Rovanpera completed his first day back down in sixth ahead of fellow Toyota teammates Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari, in eighth and ninth. M-Sport Ford’s Gregoire Munster was sandwiched in seventh, 4.9s away from Rovanpera’s time. Fellow Ford teammate, Joshua McErlean occupied 12th to complete the Rally1 runners. 

Nikolay Gryazin completed the overall top 10, in 10th, to lead the WRC2 classification.

Read more WRC here:

Give us a follow on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to keep up with the latest news from the world of Motorsport! You can also support us on Patreon or on our website!

Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.

CategoryNews Rallying WRC

About the author

Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.

Leave a Reply