Wilson salsas to sixth for Stobart
Stobart VK M-Sport Ford rally team driver Matthew Wilson and co-driver Scott Martin have advance yet another place at the mid-way point on day 2 of Rally Mexico; round three of the FIA World Rally Championship.
The Brits began cautiously in an attempt to find a good rhythm but by the second stage this morning were right back on the pace setting times on-par with five times Norwegian Rally Champion Henning Solberg. The 21-year-old however lost time on the final test before service after spinning on a hairpin left which stalled his Stobart Ford Focus RS WRC07 losing him around 10 seconds. Also on the same stage the young Briton hit a stray dog causing slight damage to the front-end of his car.
Crews headed north of Rally Campus in Leon this morning for the first of three special stages before Service D. The 29.9 kilometre Ibarrilla 1 stage, the longest of the rally, kicked things off for day 2 as competitors then made their way over two more 23 kilometre tests. An extremely calm morning forced event organisers to extend the on-road gap to three minutes between each World Rally Car as lingering dust became far too dangerous to run them at usual two minute intervals.
Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Team Driver Matthew Wilson said:
“This morning has been OK but I have struggled a little bit with the pace in areas. The boys at the front are going really hard today because it is quite tight for the top positions but for us it’s a case of keeping it steady with such a big gap back to seventh place. The second stage felt really good and the time showed this but on the last stage before service we lost about 10 seconds after I spun on a hairpin right and stalled the car which took a bit to get started again. We also hit a dog in the same stage so it was a fairly eventful one to round off the morning. I am going to continue this pace into the afternoon stages because we are in a great position at the moment and there are still a lot of testing kilometres to get through.”
Leaderboard after SS11
1. S Loeb/D Elena F Citroen C4 2h14m48.6s
2. J-M Latvala/M Anttila FIN Ford Focus RS +5.8s
3. C Atkinson/S Prevot AUS Subaru Impreza +28.2s
4. M Hirvonen/J Lehtinen FIN Ford Focus RS +1m11.8s
5. H Solberg/C Menkerud NFord Focus RS +3m34.9s
6. M Wilson/S Martin GB Ford Focus RS +4m29.4s
7. P Solberg/P Mills N Subaru Impreza +10m10.0s
8. R Trivino/C Salom MEX Peugeot 206 +14m06.1s
9. F Villagra/J P CompancRA Ford Focus RS +15m26.6s