Hirvonen loses his charge – again

Mikko Hirvonen has revealed that his retirement from Friday’s opening leg of Rally Mexico was due to a faulty alternator - the same problem that forced him out of Rallye Monte-Carlo.

The Finn was third in his M-Sport Ford Fiesta when things began to go wrong halfway through the repeated 44km El Chocolate stage.

“We had an alternator problem again and I did the last 18km with the warning [light] on all the time.” Hirvonen told wrc.com. “Obviously the battery voltage was going down as well. It lasted through that stage but then we tried to carry on through SS8 and after three kilometres we ran out of power.”

Hirvonen said an answer was needed quickly. “We really have to look into this, especially now as we’ve had a couple of similar problems we really have to find a solution.”