"I don't remember how much of a difficulty it has been in previous years," the Finn admitted. "But
Sebastien Loeb, who is our closest rival in the championship, starts only one car behind us so he won't have much of an advantage if there is loose gravel. However
Petter Solberg could benefit a lot because he will start well down the order. It will only affect us for three stages on Friday morning because the afternoon stages are repeats.
"Mexico is quite a normal gravel rally. It's not particularly technical but has a good combination of fast and slower sections. The stages are held on a good surface, which is quite smooth, but cars tend to pick up quite a bit of damage and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's a combination of high speeds and stones coming through the surface during the second run over roads. Testing has gone well and I'm confident the car will be as competitive on gravel as it has been on asphalt and snow. I have a few small things to sort out with the brakes, but that's because I left-foot brake a lot."
Mikko Hirvonen meanwhile will drive the second car and after a two-day test session in Spain the Finnish driver is confident of a strong performance.
"The feeling with the Focus was very good and provided a huge boost ahead of Mexico," he said of the Spanish test. "In fact, I was quite surprised just how good it felt considering this was my first test in the car on smooth gravel. Before this week I had only driven the Focus on rough gravel and that was a reliability test. I developed a good base setting from which I can work for all the gravel events. I will work with the engineers to concentrate on the small details and to fine-tune the settings.
