Latvala takes a bumpy win in Sweden

Jari-Matti Latvala almost let his victory at the Rally of Sweden escape in the final day, but, although the scare, he managed to give Ford its’ sixth consecutive success at the only true winter rally of the season.

It seemed like it was going to be an easy win for Latvala as the Rally of Sweden was heading towards the end, but the Finn ended up spicing things up when a late puncture saw his distance to Mirko Hirvonen reduced from 35 seconds to only eight in the antepenultimate stage.

After Friday afternoon the Finnish duo had already grabbed a considerable lead over Mads Ostberg, Petter Solberg and Sebastien Loeb, after set-up concerns, a spin and a two-minute excursion into a snow bank, respectively.

Due to some errant set-up changes and high tyre wear on the Citroën, Hirvonen lost too much time and Latvala ended up increasing his lead over his compatriot.

Fighting for the last podium place were Solberg and Ostberg, with the driver from Adapta Ford winning the challenge after Soldberg hit the same rock his team-mate Latvala had hit.

Sebastien Loeb couldn’t repeat the win he grabbed at the Monte Carlo Rally finishing sixth, but M-Sport Ford's Evgeny Novikov repeated the form he showed at the Monegasque race after driving fast enough to keep away from the recovering factory Citroën driver.

In his Go Fast Ford, Henning Solberg was seventh ahead of top Mini driver Patrik Sandell. After Thursday night’s superspecial his team-mate Dani Sordo was in the lead, but on Friday afternoon he ended up damaging his car engine in an incident with a snow bank.