SS17: Latvala flies, Solberg crashes out

Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala signalled his determination to take overall victory on the Jordan Rally with a decisively quick time on SS17. Latvala brought his Fiesta RS WRC round the 14.16 kilometre stage in 8m15.8s, 4.7 seconds quicker than Sebastien Loeb and 8.7 seconds faster than rally leader Sebastien Ogier, slashing Ogier’s overall advantage to 10.2 seconds.

“It looks good,” said Latvala. “Honestly, I was pushing really hard. My heart was really beating because two or three times we were close to some big rocks.”

“I tried harder,” said Loeb, who went through this stage in 8m30.6s this morning. “We had no information in the stage so I just pushed as hard as I could. No mistakes this afternoon!”

“I had to avoid some rocks in the road,” said Ogier. "Maybe it would have been faster to go over them but some of them were quite big.”

Behind the Citroen Total World Rally Team drivers, the privateer Citroen DS3 WRC of Petter Solberg crashed out. Mikko Hirvonen inherits fourth place overall in the second Abu Dhabi World Rally Team Fiesta RS WRC.

“I didn’t see anything of Solberg’s car,” said Hirvonen. “Jari-Matti is putting up a really good fight. I’m up a position now and I was really just saving my tyres for the last stage.”

Hirvonen stands to gain extra points if he can win the Power Stage at the end of the day.

Overall standings after SS17: