While holding a comfortable lead in the Greek event with one stage to go on Friday, Latvala lost control of his car and “parked” into a ditch, losing a huge amount of time and, consequently, the overall lead ahead of Day 2. The Ford driver did manage to come 3rd overall at the end of the rally, but that was mainly the consequence of Sebastien Loeb's, Dani Sordo's and Petter Solberg's retirements.
With teammate Mikko Hirvonen securing a comfortable lead in front of the pack for the Sunday stages, Ford went on to score a perfect 18-0 to rivals Citroen, as 2nd placed Sebastien Ogier was not listed in the manufacturers' race. Asked by the WRC official site if the overall result of the Acropolis weekend has made him a bit forgiving over Latvala, Wilson anwered affirmatively.
“Yeah. I mean Jari’s Jari; he’ll always be with the team, but I do class his mistake on Friday as one of the biggest that he’s made. It completely affected our whole strategy for the rest of the rally and okay, at the end, yes it’s turned out to be a dream result for the team, but on Friday night we were looking at disaster,” admitted Wilson.
Latvala himself admitted he has made plenty of mistakes in Greece the past weekend, but insisted he did learn something new from his screw-ups.
“The rally started really well. We looked good after SS5 and I screwed it up in SS6. And I also screwed up the team’s tactics and loaded pressure onto Mikko. I knew I could rescue something, some place between five and seven. When I do clever driving, I don’t care about anybody else. I just needed to save my tires and save my car – these tactics really worked well,” added the Finnish driver.
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