Throughout 2011 wrc.com will be talking to technical bosses from leading teams to discover the challenges encountered on rounds of the World Rally Championship and how they affected the performance of their cars.
We caught up with Christian Loriaux, the Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team’s technical director, after the finish of Rally Guanajuato Mexico in Leon last Sunday afternoon, where the Blue Oval made “best of a bad job”, according to the Belgian, by finishing second and third to extend its lead in the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships.
Overall, how would you sum up Ford’s performance in Mexico?
“To be honest, I was expecting us to be a bit more competitive. On Friday the pace was good given the road position we had, Saturday was disappointing, but on Sunday Mikko won the Power Stage, so it means that the speed is there when needed.”
Why was Mikko so competitive on the Power Stage?
“That’s a stage that Mikko identified right from the beginning as somewhere he could go well. Because it had been used before, it was cleaning properly and Mikko found really good grip and traction, which we had optimised using the set-up. That was probably the key to it, but he had a lot of confidence there as well.”
Ambient temperatures were high on this rally. What difference did that make?
“This was the first time that we had ever run in high ambient temperatures of 30 degrees. When we tested in Portugal before Mexico, it was more like 15 degrees, and that obviously affected the set-up a bit.”
Mexico is also known for its high-altitude stages. How much of a problem was this?
“The altitude didn’t have so much of an effect as last year, because our car and the Citroen are a lot more similar than they were last year [as they both have six-speed gearboxes]. In the end, the altitude is always going to have an affect, which can be sometimes as much as 20 per cent less power, but on Friday and Sunday in particular we were happy with our pace.”
Ford spent a few days in a laboratory conducting simulations of running in high altitude before coming to Mexico. Did it work?
“We did a lot of work on the engine mapping for high altitudes before coming here, which is something that we didn’t get the chance to do so much last year. I would say it definitely helped.”
A lot was made of the electrical glitches that affected a number of the customer Fiestas, caused by impacts damaging the cooling fans for the electrical system. How confident are you this will be resolved before Portugal?
“We’re on top of that. Our two factory cars were totally reliable, so I don’t think you’ll see that happening again.”
How would you rate Jari-Matti Latvala’s performance in your second factory Fiesta?
“If you take away the punctures then I think Jari-Matti would have been around 30 seconds off the lead on Friday, which is good considering that we were cleaning the road. It’s hard to say exactly what the gap would have been though as obviously when you lose two minutes you get a bit disappointed and don’t push in quite the same way. Maybe he could have challenged for the win, but at the same time we definitely weren’t the best in Mexico.”
Why were punctures more of an issue on this rally than they were last year?
“Obviously this year we have a new supplier and the drivers have to learn that. We told Jari-Matti to keep closer to the line more on the second day and that worked.”
Credit: World Rally Championship (www.wrc.com)
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