PoloDriver

The Rally Mexico got off to a rapturous start last night in Guanajuato, with two short spectator stages. The Volkswagen Motorsport rally team were given an enthusiastic welcome at the 1km-long ‘Guanajuato Street Stage’ and the cobblestone-lined ‘Parque Bicentenario’ special stage. Maybe not surprisingly, Ogier posted the fastest time to move into the lead as the Mexican carnival gets ready for the start of day two. Jari-Matti Latvala finished further down the field, but only 6.4 seconds behind his French team-mate.

Both Polo R WRCs qualified well on their first competitive outing on gravel – Ogier came in fifth on the 6.2km stage near León, while Latvala followed two places behind. Post-qualifying, Ogier selected a ninth-place start position for the first 13 special stages of the event, while Latvala chose seventh. Volkswagen Motorsport will run hard compound tyres on the Rally Mexico for the duration of the event, even though the softer variant promises faster qualifying times.

Ogier was far from thrilled with his qualifying session: ‘I am not happy with qualifying. We had the disadvantage of having to open the stage. We took the safe choice with the hard tyre compound. What we didn’t expect was that there would be quite such a big difference between the hard and the soft. Qualifying is very important here at the Rally Mexico, to give yourself a good starting position. We still have that. Our goal is to finish the rally and get a good result. Compared to our rivals, we have an extra set of fresh tyres to use on the special stages.’

Latvala was equally wary of the non-obvious tyre choice: ‘Obviously the soft tyres have produced the better times in qualifying, while we opted for the harder compound. At first glance, starting from seventh does not look ideal. However, we will have to wait and see how the rally pans out – it could ultimately be an advantage to have more hard tyres left. Our priority remains to use our first gravel rally to close the gap on our rivals in terms of experience with the Polo. We can only do that if we complete the full distance.’