Rally Sweden / Rally review
The Volkswagen boys once again dominated the standings, left Ogier and Latvala, right Mikkelsen
On day one everyone feared a Volkswagen procession. And in a way it was. Only it was far from
being boring. The three Polo drivers individually
wanted to prove who was the best.
Mikkelsen started by being fastest on the first
stage. Ogier passed him pretty soon, but especially when the young Norwegian arrived on
home soil he was cheered loudly and this clearly
gave him wings.
seconds. (So it was really close: Mikkelsen lost
nearly all of these six seconds on the last Torsby
stage.) Behind Mikkelsen was Jari Matti Latvala
who, as he said, drove a steady drive and felt
good.
13/42
The other batlle
But behind this notorious threesome another interesting battle developed. It featured people like
Ott Tanak, Henning Solberg and WRC regulars
like Østberg and Hirvonen. Right behind them
In a direct fight with his number one team col- the two Hyundai drivers showed good pace with
league Ogier he clawed back to first place, but at Neuville in seventh and Hänninen right behind
the end of the first full day of rallying Mikkelsen him.
was behind Ogier again.
Tanak
Ogier, enjoying the fight, had gained some six But most interesting was Tanak, rejected last
year from the official Ford Team but back on track
again. He created himself a mixed programme
with three Fiesta RS WRC appearances and a
full programme in WRC2 in a Fiesta R5.
In Sweden he proved again he can be very fast.
M-Sport already recognized that, but blamed the
Estonian for being inconsistent. On the first day
in Sweden however, he was the only one to challenge the Volkswagen trio. “I did not expect to be
able to match the speed of the WRC regulars,” he
confessed. “Seventy kilometres of testing proved
to be enough after all,’ he smiled. At the end of
the day he was still fourth behind the complete
VW team, but before Østberg and Hirvonen.