Petter admits to a 'little regret' over his tactical choice

After taking second place in Rally Mexico, and clinching his best WRC result for two years, Citroen driver Petter Solberg has admitted to feeling 'a little regret' over his decision not to employ road position tactics on Friday.

Having built a 17 second lead on Friday afternoon, Solberg had been expected to drop time on SS17 - the stage which determined Saturday's road order - to let one or two cars go though the stages before him on day two and sweep the road of loose gravel.

In the event Solberg kept his lead and struggled as road sweeper himself on Saturday, while Sebastien Loeb benefited from the cleaner racing line to open up a lead of almost a minute.

Asked if he now regretted the decision to keep his Friday lead, Solberg said: "A little bit, but forget it, it doesn’t matter now because we got second and I'm very happy with that."

"Yes, I could have played a tactical game. But in the team we decided it was more important for us to show that we were leading a rally. We're still looking for sponsors for this season, and to be ahead of everybody else sends a strong message. Anyway, I needed to learn how to be fast in this car when the road conditions weren't ideal.

"Maybe it could have led to a different result if we played tactics, who knows, but I wasn't interested to do it," he added.