After a devastating second round for Sebastien Loeb in Sweden, the Frenchman sailed to victory on the extremely jagged surface of the first gravel event of the season – Rally Mexico.
Ardent fans of the sport are most disappointed when the fastest and most spectacular drivers aren’t out doing what they do best due to stage cancellations and flat tyres, but this seemed to be the order of the day as mechanical failure and cracked rubber in the heat of the Mexican sun took its toll on the teams and drivers this weekend.
Loeb drove to a relatively trouble-free victory despite being the first man out on the course on the last day. Team Citroën seems to be desperate to keep in contention for the manufacturer’s title after the lack of any constructor’s points in Sweden saw Citroën in fourth place in the championship standings. Unfortunately Dani Sordo’s C4 broke its suspension on the first stage. He was able to get back in the chase under Super Rally rules, but despite a few stage wins the Spaniard couldn’t manage more than 17th down the order.
“I’m delighted to have won here. Following our blank scorecard in Sweden, it was important to try to bounce back straight away. It wasn’t easy and, as often seems to be the case in Mexico, we had a troubled start, but the rest of the event went very well for us! It’s the sort of victory I like because it came after a good fight. Marcus Gronholm’s absence has already been filled by another Finn who is younger and just as determined. I think we can look forward to some good scraps this year, and that’s fine by me! For this weekend’s hard-packed stages, Pirelli took the safe choice with a very hard compound in a bid to ward off punctures. We effectively didn’t suffer any, but we had to adjust our set-up to improve traction. The team responded well and our times here with the C4 WRC are an encouraging pointer for the rest of the year,” said Loeb as he stepped off the podium.
Subaru’s Chris Atkinson piloted his Impreza WRC to a careful second place after BP-Ford also suffered problems early on. It was hard for the Aussie as lack of sleep the night before the final leg and a less-than-perfect set-up in his Impreza needed every ounce of concentration he could muster to claim his best yet result in WRC. After two podiums in just three rounds he sits in fourth for the Drivers’ title.
“All the team, the guys on my car, Subaru all did a top job. It was good fun to beat Sebastien on the super special at the end there! It’s a great start to the year for me and also for the team, and I hope we can keep building on this. We’re making good steps forward and the car felt really good this weekend. We did some work on the dampers after Sweden and that was a big help – they were good here in the heat, which is always a tough test. Now we look to Argentina and to keep this performance going. The sooner I can win the better,” exclaimed Atkinson.
BP-Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala was in good contention for the victory after leg one, but on the afternoon of leg two, the pipe between the intercooler and turbo on his Focus WRC broke, dropping the Finn to third in the field. After sufficient repairs were made it was already too late for Latvala to pose any real threat to Loeb. The third day saw Latvala taking his time with the stages, despite halving the gap between himself and Atkinson in three stages.
“It’s an important result for me and it’s a good result for the team and our championship challenge. I achieved my goal of being on the podium and it’s just a shame we had a problem yesterday when fighting for the lead. But if I think about things closely, it has been a good weekend and I don’t have any complaints. The best aspect was being able to challenge Loeb and match his times and I hope I can get just as close to him in the future because I had good speed this weekend,” said Latvala.
Latvala’s BP-Ford teammate, Mikko Hirvonen, had horrid luck with punctures and cracked tyres. Although he couldn’t chase the top dogs due to the disturbed stages he experienced, he kept in the top five and eventually passed Henning Solberg on the way to fourth.
The next event on the WRC calendar is Rally Argentina, best known for being run on narrow roads with spectacular opportunities for getting wet in the many water crossings that riddle the course.