Sébastien Ogier completes a Citroën quartet

Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia and Kimi Räikkönen/Kaj Lindström have all accumulated valuable
asphalt experience and made progress up the leaderboard on the second day of the Rally Bulgaria.
The French crew has rejoined the leading quartet, while the two Finns still have a chance of scoring
some points.

The first day of the Bulgaria Rally turned out to be a long one for the Citroën Junior Team. After Kimi
Räikkönen and Kaj Lindström went off the road on SS4 the number eight Citroën C4 WRC eventually
made it back to the service park at 21:23. Eight mechanics – the maximum number permitted under the
current rules – then set to work so that the 2007 Formula One World Champion would be able to restart
the rally on Saturday. The job was wrapped up within the 2h45min allowed by the rules and the car
finally went into parc fermé at 23:55. After a short night – with first service scheduled for 06:15 – both
cars were able to start the second day.

“The entire team did a great job,” pointed out Kimi Raikkonen. “This morning my Citroën C4 WRC was
as good as new and we were able to drive at our usual speed in order to accumulate all the kilometres
that we need to make progress.”

Faced with uncertain weather conditions at the start of the day, the Citroën Junior Team chose to fit softcompound
Pirelli PZero tyres. “That was the best option,” said team manager Benoit Nogier. “We were
able to rely on the information from the weather forecast, our safety crews and the data collected during
testing to make the right decision.”

As Sébastien Ogier pointed out: “We made a better tyre choice than our rivals. From the first split times
we adjusted our pace in order not to take too many risks, while at the same time ensuring that we would
reclaim fourth place from the Ford drivers as soon as we could.”
The Frenchman was back up to fourth after SS5 and hung onto his position for the rest of the day.
“There was not a huge amount more to be gained in the overall classification,” he added. “We just
remained concentrated on driving our own rally while making use of every kilometre to make as much
progress as we could. Our goal will be exactly the same tomorrow.”

Kimi Räikkönen also climbed up the leaderboard to reach 14th overnight. “On the last two stages I
pushed a bit more on soft tyres,” said Räikkönen. “Tomorrow we’ll try to get back into the top 10 even
though I think we’re a bit far off still. It’s going to be interesting, whatever happens!”

Benoit Nogier concluded: “It’s been a long day that started off with SupeRally for Kimi. We first had
to put the car back to perfect working order and I’d like to thank the entire team for an excellent job.
From a sporting point of view we made some good tyre choices thanks to our solid preparations before
coming out here. It’s great to see that we are making the most of all the work we have done in the past.
Sébastien needs to carry on just as he has been doing, while keeping one eye on the future, while Kimi
has a bit of a challenge on his hands to make it into the points. To be honest it will be tricky, but he is
feeling more and more comfortable with the car.”