Hirvonen beats Loeb fair and square

After an entertaining Friday in Rally Sweden with Hirvonen, Loeb and Sordo all very close to each other, the fun ended in the Saturday as both leading Citroens handled the tyres worse than the Fords; Sordo started falling back, then spun and then had a mechanical problem relegating him to 4th; and Hirvonen just went mad at the front pulling a gap from Loeb. Sunday didn’t have much history as Loeb settled for second, Hirvonen getting a very impressive win, and Jari-Matti Latvala completing the podium for Ford. It will be interesting to see how this season develops, as Hirvonen’s been getting closer and closer to Sebastien Loeb in recent years, and now he starts the season with a psychological and points advantage. Time for Mikko’s first world championship?

Mikko attacking the snow surface

Besides the top 4 works cars, Ogier did fantastically well to grab a very solid 5th place in his Rally Sweden debut, not putting a wheel wrong all event; Henning Solberg and Matthew Wilson got 6th and 7th for Stobart Ford; Ostberg got 8th in an outdated Subaru; Petter Solberg managed to salvage a mere 2 points after the errors in Friday. Local driver PG Andersson completed the points scorers in a Skoda Fabia S2000, the swede having pulled away at a fantastic rate from his opponents in the Friday and then carefully managing his lead through the rest of the rally. Andersson was declared the S-WRC winner on the championship’s first ever round, 57 seconds away from Tuohino, albeit Mikkelsen was in-between them with a S2000 car but not as a S-WRC entrant. Patrick Flodin won in the P-WRC with a comfortable 1 minute lead over Anders Grondal.

PG Andersson was one of the stars of the rally, dominating the S2000 class

Kimi Raikkonen could not do better than 30th at the end of the rally, and Marcus Gronholm ended up a distant 21st too, but only because both had made major mistakes in the Friday, of course. Kimi regularly put top 10 times, a top 6 time being an highlight, while Marcus won a stage. Both will come home disappointed that they didn’t score, albeit Kimi shown some promise for the future.

To cheer up anyone that has just read this boring summary of the event, here’s a video with spectacular jumps, as the cars went by “Colin’s Crest” in the Vargasen stage:

Final results:

Pos Driver Car Time/Gap
1. Mikko Hirvonen Ford 3h09m30.4s
2. Sebastien Loeb Citroen + 42.3s
3. Jari-Matti Latvala Ford + 1m15.4s
4. Dani Sordo Citroen + 2m41.6s
5. Sebastien Ogier Citroen + 4m15.3s
6. Henning Solberg Ford + 5m23.4s
7. Matthew Wilson Ford + 7m53.9s
8. Mads Ostberg Subaru + 9m22.2s
9. Petter Solberg Citroen + 10m17.5s
10. P-G Andersson Skoda + 12m08.9s