Fastest time for Petter on SS21

A fastest time for Citroen privateer Petter Solberg on Rally Mexico’s penultimate stage put him firmly back in the fight with Sebastien Ogier for second place - a scrap which will be settled on the final 4.42km Super Special.

Solberg completed the 17km Comanjilla 0.8sec quicker than Ogier, to trail the Frenchman by just six-tenths going into the decisive head-to-head test.

"If he beats me here he deserves to win - I was driving on the door handles!" Solberg said at the stage end. "I’m very happy with what I did here. When I can attack like this it’s an incredible feeling."

Fellow Citroen C4 WRC driver Ogier said: "It’s a big, big fight. We did a good stage before this, now I have to stay concentrated and do one more! "

At the head of the standings, rally leader Sebastien Loeb cruised through SS21 to take a 26.1 sec time cushion into the Super Special. "At the moment everything is perfect," he said. "There’s just the Super Stage to go and we still have a good lead. I just have to take it easy. The biggest part is done. I hope we can finish like this."

Behind the leading trio of Citroens, the two BP Ford Abu Dhabi Team drivers switched positions.

"We slowed down at the end to let Mikko go in front of us," explained Jari-Matti Latvala, who had been fourth. "We are second drivers this year, this is part of our job and that’s it. Mikko needs these points more for his title fight against Loeb. We want to keep as good a fight as possible for those guys. We’ll still get the same total in the manufacturers’."

"It’s not something I like but it’s been a difficult weekend for us," added Hirvonen. "We saw last year that we need all the points we can. We had to do it."