Day 2 – Latvala surprises… Loeb throws in the towel!

For the second day of the Rally of Sweden, Jari-Matti Latvala in a Ford Focus continued to impress. The Finn is about 49 seconds ahead of his BP Ford teammate, Mikko Hirvonen.

Unlike on the first day, the Ford cars were less decisive, leaving their attacking pace in the garage, opting instead for “prudence.” Indeed, it was Dani Sordo who best defended Citroen’s colors today by achieving three of the 5 best times, leaving the other times to Loeb and Hirvonen.

In the standings, Sordo remains 18th despite his 5-minute penalty received for his engine change at Monte Carlo.

Latvala played it safe and maintained his gap with his teammate and main competitor after Sébastien Loeb’s retirement yesterday. The Fords impress and Gigi Galli takes third place. The Stobart Italian would match his best WRC result thanks to his teammate Henning Solberg’s retirement in SS11.

Peter Solberg is disrupting the Ford Focus cars. He is the first non-Ford driver with his Subaru Impreza but remains more than a minute behind the leaders.

Matthew Wilson is in 5th place. He is ahead of the 20-year-old Andreas Mikkelsen by less than 10 seconds.

« I’m going at it hard and it has been a good day. I will continue to push tomorrow to see if I can succeed with my bet. » comments Mikkelsen.

Wilson, for his part, admitted that he wasn’t in good shape today but hopes to defend his fifth place tomorrow: « Andreas [Mikkelsen] is pushing hard from behind and I struggled a lot to find my rhythm. »

At one point, I had a big problem, I thought it was a flat tire, but eventually, it wasn’t. I had two big scares, but we are still here and we will fight hard tomorrow! concluded the Finn.

Dani Sordo takes 7th place for the moment in the only Citroen still in contention and also leads the only Suzuki SX4 with Tony Gardemeister, as PG Andersson decided not to restart this morning.

Henning Solberg, who experienced many problems and went off the road, is in 18th place, still far ahead of Chris Atkinson in the second official Subaru Impreza: He is in 29th place.

Sweden Rally – Day 2 – Top 10