SS3: Latvala back on the attack

A dominant stage win from BP-Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala on SS3 moved the Finn up the leaderboard from 14th to third place.

Latvala, running fourth on the road, got off to a bad start with a puncture on the day’s first stage. But he did a great recovery job on the 24km Mayra stage - the longest of the day - completing it fifteen seconds quicker than Citroen’s Dani Sordo, who was his closest rival. Latvala said he was ‘really surprised’ to have been so much quicker than the other drivers.

There was bad news, however, for the fastest man on the previous test, Urmo Aava, who retired at the 18km mark with right-hand rear suspension damage.

Stobart team driver Gigi Galli also had problems. The Italian had to stop on the road section from SS2 to repair his car’s rear bumper which was touching the red-hot exhaust. He collected a 10-second time penalty for starting the stage late.