Ford bullish despite losing out in Mexico

Malcolm Wilson says the factory Ford team remains bullish despite its drivers being outpaced by the rival Citroen squad on Rally Guanajuato Mexico.

Ford dominated the world championship season-opener in Sweden last month but has so far being unable to record a stage win on the mainly gravel-based Mexican tests. Its factory drivers Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala are third and fourth respectively with Hirvonen 1m43.0s adrift of leader Sebastien Loeb in a Citroen DS3 WRC.

Speaking at the midday service halt in Leon, Wilson said he would still take plenty of positives away from the event, which marks the Fiesta RS WRC’s debut on gravel.

“The only thing disappointing is that we’ve not been able to capitalise on our [lower] road position today,” said Wilson. “We’ll be taking a sensible approach now and keep the result we’ve got although we will still keep pushing and keep learning about things on the car.”

He continued: “We want to do better for sure but we’ve seen some encouraging things and our pace we’ve been able to do compared to 12 months ago is a big step. We want to be closer and we know the areas where we can improve and that’s the important thing.”