Latvala back on form!

In an excellent turn of form, Ford's Jari-Matti Latvala stormed to an impressive win in the Welsh forests, host to the 2012 Wales Rally GB.

Quick to praise his team, Latvala said: “This is a fantastic feeling. It’s one of my favourite rallies, I won it last year and it feels amazing to win again after such a big battle. To be honest this victory is for the team. They have done so much work on the car and it was working so well on this rally. I was really happy with the set-up and it was a great performance. I had some doubts after Rally Finland but to come back strong like this is really good for the championship.”

The rally was an incredible one for Ford, with the Blue Oval's works team leading from SS1, first by way of Petter Solberg before an inspired Jari-Matti Latvala took the lead on SS3 and held it. Latvala's final winning margin was 27.8 secs over the 8 times World Rally Champion Sebastian Loeb.

Loeb struggled for pace at the start of the rally, with both himself and team-mate Mikko Hirvonen opting to carry two spare tyres to Ford's one, thus carrying extra weight. However, little was at stake for the record breaking French squad, as they have one hand firmly on both Championships.

0.9 secs separated Loeb from Petter Solberg after a tense final day. Loeb went into the final stage with only a tenth of a second separating the two. Not happy with losing time on Sunday morning, Solberg said “I'm very happy for Ford, but first and third should have been first and second”.

Continuing his ever impressive run of consistency, Mads Ostberg took a fine fourth in his privateer Ford Fiesta RS WRC, and sits only five points away from 3^rd place in the Drivers table. Mikko Hirvonen struggled for pace in his works Citroen DS3 WRC, taking fifth place. Evgney Novikov took inherited sixth place in his Ford Fiesta RS WRC when M-Sport Ford team-mate Ott Tanak took a wheel off his similar car two stages from home.

A faultless drive from Theirry Neuville in tricky conditions lead to seventh place, ahead of the returning Matthew Wilson in eighth, who has been out of the WRC since breaking his ankle in his training accent after Rallye Monte Carlo way back in January. Ninth and tenth went to Martin Prokop and Olympic medallist Nasser Al-Attiyah.

Both Ott Tanak, who, as previously mentioned, took a wheel off his Fiesta RS WRC, and Paulo Nobre failed to make it to the finish of the rally.

Craig Breen went back to his winning ways on the S-WRC section of Wales Rally GB after taking a commanding win in the S2000 class. 2 mins 37 secs ahead of Proton driver Tom Cave in a Proton Satria Neo S2000, it didn't all go Breen's way. Gearbox problems as well as a late power-steering fluid leak cost him 1 mins 20 secs in penalties to drop him one tenth of a second behind Yazeed Al-Rajhi. However, when the Saudi driver was hit with a 5 min penalty for a second road section speeding offence. Breen's crew completed the gearbox change in an impressive 22 mins, 4 mins faster than estimated.

Breen then set about managing the new gap back to Cave, and held it to the end. Al-Rajhi took third after his penalty. This result put Breen back into the fight for the S-WRC title, 8 points separating PG Andersson, Hayden Paddon and Breen, with two rounds remaining. Amazing when you consider Breen didn't score in four consecutive rounds mid-season.

Please note that all the above images have been used under the kind permission of Keegan Rees of RallyMad Photography. All of the images are copyright to Mr. Rees/RallyMad Photography, and cannot be used in any way without explicit permission from Mr. Rees/RallyMad Photography.