Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team's Jari-Matti Latvala was pleased to find extra pace after a steady start to the Jordan Rally, and goes into the second and final competitive day of the event running third in the Fiesta RC WRC he shares with co-driver Mika Anttila.
On the last stage of the day he followed the tactics of Citroen’s Sebastien Loeb in slowing down to avoid taking the lead and being forced to run first on the road in tomorrow’s stages.
“I had a bit of a slow start today but then I began to find the rhythm,” Latvala told WRC.com. “There were some areas where we were losing time on the clean roads in the morning, but we did some small setup changes, they helped a bit, and we were stronger in the afternoon.
“I had two big moments today but other than that I’m satisfied with the performance.”
After the dramatic final stage Loeb admitted that after slowing down he then made several mistakes, losing more time. Latvala also found driving slowly quite tough.
“It’s a stressful thing to try because you know you have to slow down, and when you do that it’s difficult to keep the concentration.
“I knew that the team would tell us what to do. We got the message with the target time so we slowed down.”
“It will be extremely difficult to win from first in the start order so I'm very happy with my road position [third] for tomorrow. I wanted to be behind Loeb and I achieved that, so a win is my target. I need to be consistent, enjoy a clean run, and develop the same kind of feeling with the car that I had this afternoon. If I can find all three, then I believe I have a good chance.”
Credit: World Rally Championship (www.wrc.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment