Going into the last stage of the Sunday action, Ogier was leading the Ford driver by more than 6 seconds. However, one big disadvantage over Latvala was that he had to open the road, which eventually forced him into 2 spins – one in the early kilometers, and the other only hundreds of meters to the finish line – that gave the Finninsh driver a 2.4 second overall victory margin.
“This is maybe the best victory. Towards the end I was almost off the road myself. I thought it was not enough. He made a little mistake and we were maybe a little bit lucky, but it feels good. I haven't done any fastest stage times on this rally, but consistency counts,” said Latvala after his first WRC win of 2010.
Apart from being Ford’s 2nd win this season, after Mikko Hirvonen’s victory in Rally Sweden, this was the manufacturer’s 75th overall win in the WRC. Meaning that Ford just became the winningest manufacturer in the history of the sport, surpassing Lancia (74 wins) for first place.
Needless to say, Ogier was very disappointed at the finish line, as he reckoned his two mistakes in the last stage cost him a worthy win.
“It was so, so close. I did a spin three corners before the end. It's a big shame,” said Ogier, who managed to finish ahead of reigning WRC champion Sebastien Loeb. The Citroen driver tried to catch Ogier and Latvala in the last stage, but he suffered a spin of himself to eventually finish 15 seconds off the pace.
Fourth place could have gone to privateer Petter Solberg, who was only 16 seconds behind Ogier at the beginning of the Whaanga Cost stage. However, while trying to push for a podium appearance, the Norwegian hit a telegraph pole and crashed out of the rally (neither him, nor co-driver Phil Mills were hurt).
That gave Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen the 4th position in the overall classification, ahead of Citroen’s Dani Sordo, Stobart’s duo Matthew Wilson and Henning Solberg, Jari Ketomaa, Federico Villagra and Xevi Pons.
Rally New Zealand’s win lifted Latvala all the way to 2nd overall, 36 points behind championship leader Sebastien Loeb, but 12 points clear of teammate Mikko Hirvonen. Sebastien Ogier completes the quad of aces in 4th place, only one point behind Hirvonen.
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