Latvala to test Fiesta next week

Injury plagued Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala is expected to be back in a rally car as soon as next week, in preparation for the Acropolis Rally in 20 days’ time.

Latvala will test a Ford Fiesta RS WRC next week on the Italian island of Sardinia alongside team-mate Petter Solberg. The Finn will test the Fiesta for two days as he fights to be fit for the rough gravel World Championship classic.

“It’ll be great to get Jari back in the car. He’s had some padding made to go over the area where he broke his collarbone, but he hasn’t been feeling any pain since two days after the accident. We’re 99.9 per cent certain he will be competing with us in Greece.” said Team Director Malcolm Wilson.

Latvala broke his left collarbone in a freak training accident in the Lapland region of northern Finland almost a month ago. Forced to sit out Argentina whilst Dani Sordo took his place, Latvala was always expected to make his return to competition in Greece, but, according to himself, is “90% recovered and ahead of schedule”, therefore being “confident for Greece”.

The Finn will return to the WRC 63 points behind Championship leader Sebastian Loeb. With only two scores to his name out of 5 rallies, Latvala is realistically out of the Championship fight now. Team-mate Petter Solberg is well stuck into the fight, 18 points behind after his steering failure in Argentina.

“Jari-Matti has some trouble for the moment and lost a lot of points in the championship. I think my main rivals now are [Mikko] Hirvonen and [Petter] Solberg. Even before Latvala’s problems they were still the closest drivers in the championship. They are fast drivers, Solberg is very fast in the Ford and Mikko is understanding how our car is working so they will be good rivals.”