Fellow Ford runners
Federico Villagra and
Gigi Galli came in sixth and seventh, the former doing incredibly well after losing over 10 minutes on Saturday afternoon with exhaust issues.
Galli was also fortunate to get points and like Mikko did so thanks to the SupeRally format having retired from day 2 after hitting a rock in SS13 and damaging his Focus RS WRC.
Andreas Aigner completed the top eight and in addition to picking up the final 'senior' WRC point he also took the
FIA Production Car World Rally Championship victory too.
Aigner led the PWRC category for all but one of the stages and eventually beat Sebastian Beltran by just over a minute. Jari Ketomaa was third in class and tenth overall, followed by Fumio Nutahara and Martin Rauam, who incidentally were 11th and 13th in the overall classification.
Sandwiched between Nutahara and Rauam was
Jari-Matti Latvala. Latvala used the SupeRally twice to get to the end in his
BP Ford Focus RS WRC car and picked up 2 manufacturers’ points for the 'Blue Oval'.
Per-Gunnar Andersson took the final manufacturers’ point for
Suzuki, but that was about the only positive thing for the Swede. He missed all of Friday’s action after an electronic sensor failure en-route to SS1 and he then went out again on day 2 with suspension damage in SS14. He was classified 24th overall.
His team-mate,
Toni Gardemeister didn’t even manage that though, going out on day 1 after hitting a rock and damaging his suspension, while mechanical gremlins sidelined him on days 2 and 3.
Of the other works drivers’ Luis-Perez Companc slid off the road on day one in SS8 and never re-joined as severe weather left him and his recovery team stranded on the stage.
Stobart Ford’s
Henning Solberg and
Matthew Wilson were also unable to finish, the latter having been set to get a good result until hit a rock in SS15 and damaged the suspension. Although he re-started on Sunday the same thing happened again in SS19 and he was subsequently forced to call it a day.
