The team principal of Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT, Jari-Matti Latvala, speaks highly of Sebastien Ogier's performance in Greece despite his mistake in Powerstage while he believes that Acropolis Rally started to wrong direction and kept going wrong.
The Japanese team lost Takamoto Katsuta in Stage 3 as he lost the wheel of his Yaris while Elfyn Evans suffered from turbo issues on Friday morning and was forced to retire before the start of Stage 12 after his roll in Stage 11. On the other hand, Sebastien Ogier was fighting for the top places all the last weekend despite the turbo issues he faced on the final two stages of Friday. The Frenchman started the last day of Acropolis Rally in a positive way as he was the fastest driver on the first two stages of Sunday and topped the SuperSunday standings until Powerstage where he suffered from a puncture and rolled his Yaris. However, he managed to complete Powerstage and to secure the 13 points from Saturday classification, but he scored zero points on Sunday. After the end of Acropolis Rally, Ogier slipped behind the second Ott Tanak for four points on the championship with three rounds remaining until the season finale.
"It’s a difficult moment for us", Latvala said.
"Sometimes when things start to go wrong direction, they can keep going wrong, and that’s just how it is.
"It’s been a tough weekend, but Seb is a fighter and after what happened on Friday, he had to push.
"He needed to try to win the Power Stage and the Sunday standings because with that we would have been able to recover some ground in the championship.
"What happened in the last stage was unfortunate and we paid a big penalty for it, but at least he and Vincent could bring the car to the finish.
"We keep fighting, we will not lose that spirit, and we’ll take it rally-by-rally and see what the results will be.
"One positive to take away from today is that our Rally2 car won WRC2 in the hands of Sami and Enni, and that is something really nice to see".
Photo Credits: Toyota
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