Jari-Matti increases lead over Petter

In Jari-Matti Latvala’s dictionary saying “I’m going to drive safely” means he will push hard and continue lining up stage victories. He was again fastest and added 3.8 seconds to the gap to Petter Solberg in fight for third spot overall. Actually, fight is a bit too optimistic term seeing Solberg will hardly be pushing Ford’s number one driver and risk forcing Jari-Matti or himself into errors.

With their gap over Fords pretty big, Citroën’s duo Loeb and Hirvonen were able to ease up a bit, and Hirvonen was more successful in that, losing further 6 seconds to Loeb. Frenchman is now 34.7 seconds ahead of his team mate.

“I didn’t want to take big risks, it was pretty tricky with some big stones. If we were too hit it, we would destroy the car, so we had to be careful. I’m not sure how those stones got there, but if other cars threw them up, then those cars are surely missing a wheel or two”, Loeb complained.

“No need to have a big push, Jari-Matti is very far behind. I don’t think I was driving that slowly, but it seems I did. About team orders, no point in that, Sebastien is far ahead and even if I pushed hard all the time I don’t think it would help much. It’s about keeping it on the road”, Mikko Hirvonen.

“It was quite good run, I’m quite happy. I wasn’t cleaning that much, but it was pretty loose. Good training for tomorrow and the power stage. I haven’t had much luck with that this year so let’s see”, said Latvala.

“Very, very slippery stage, but I think I did well. We did couple of mistakes, but nothing major. We’ll see what guys behind will do. We still have to be careful and let’s see how it goes”, said Solberg.