Wilson: early time loss cost Ford

Ford team boss Malcolm Wilson says the closeness of the lead battle on Neste Oil Rally Finland meant it was always going to be a tall order for his squad to outgun rival Citroen on the FIA World Rally Championship round following its slow start.

Blue Oval drivers Jari-Matti Latvala and Petter Solberg were third and fourth respectively behind works Citroen pair Sebastien Loeb and Mikko Hirvonen at the finish of the high-speed gravel event in Jyvaskyla this evening having failed to hit back from the time lost on the opening day.

“The time we lost on Thursday night put us on the back foot and with this being such a close rally we knew it would be hard to pull it back,” said Wilson. “We’ve seen how close this rally is with 0.3s covering the top four on a 23-kilometre stage today. The pace was there today and the latter part of yesterday but we probably made a small mistake with the set-up and we couldn’t pull the time back.”

“There’s no question Citroen has made progress but I know Jari-Matti wasn’t himself on Thursday and yesterday either,” Wilson continued. “However, we had no problems with either car and it was encouraging to have seven Fiesta RS WRCs in the top 10.”

Ford Racing’s European motorsport manager Gerard Quinn added: “I have huge respect for Jari-Matti and Petter for the tremendous effort they put in this weekend. It’s not the result we wanted but they faced a difficult challenge to regain time, and did a great job over the fastest roads in the WRC.”