Latvala: Late Input Was Vital For Victory

Rally Sweden winner JariMatti Latvala has revealed how his maiden season with Toyota was saved by a matter of days when he arrived at the team last year.

- David Evans

Latvala was confirmed as Toyota Gazoo Racing’s lead driver in the first week in December, just as the Finnish squad was finalising its homologation specification on key parts for the Yaris WRC. The changes Latvala made to certain transmission components made the difference between winning and losing, according to the new World Rally Championship leader.

“If I had come to the team two weeks later then I wouldn’t be winning here,” Latvala told MN. “We had a lot of homologation details which were being sorted out, but I had this time of 14 days to give my input and to get things done. I was working on gear ratios and the differential set-up, these were the key parts we changed to make the car [better]. And we did it in time.”

Last week’s win was Toyota’s first world championship success since Didier Auriol’s Rally China success in 1999 and an emotional Latvala admitted it came earlier than he had expected – despite his second place at last month’s Monte Carlo Rally.

“The feeling from this win is the same as when I won a world championship rally for the first time in 2008. Before the start of the year, I was thinking top six in Monte and top five in Sweden might be possible.”