17 Jul 12

Ford
crews
get
that
Olympic
feeling

While Citroen's FIA World Rally Championship star Nasser Al-Attiyah is taking part in the London 2012 Olympics for real, several Ford-powered stars from the series demonstrated their sporting prowess at the firm's European engineering base recently.

Eight Ford drivers and co-drivers, including factory pilots Jari-Matti Latvala and Petter Solberg, were at the Blue Oval’s Dunton facility to take part in a traditional British primary school-style sports day.

But there was no skeet shooting - Al-Attiyah’s discipline - or any other Olympic-approved sports on show for that matter. Instead the WRC aces took part in more light-hearted activities such as a sack race, a three-legged sprint, bean bag-on-the-head race and the classic egg and spoon charge.

Latvala, Solberg and Ott Tanak were victorious in two races each with the 2003 world champion Solberg taking the honours in the title-deciding egg and spoon event, amid unfounded allegations that he had fixed his egg to his spoon prior to taking to the starting blocks.

“It was a really fun day, but we’re all ultra-competitive guys and I think there were probably more tactics than on rallies,” the Norwegian joked. “There was a little bit of cheating going on, although obviously not by me, and it was all in good spirit.”

The factory Ford drivers and their counterparts at the M-Sport Ford World Rally Team, Tanak and Evgeny Novikov, will put on hold their Olympic aspirations for the time being at least when they return to WRC duty on Neste Oil Rally Finland from 2-4 August.