Rally Turkey: Day 2Toyota Yaris WRC trio to fight on after a tough Friday

Quotes:
Tommi Mäkinen (Team Principal)

“It hasn’t been an easy day. Everything was going OK this morning, including for Ott as he was first on the road and we knew it would be tough. The puncture this afternoon has unfortunately made it a bit more difficult for him now. Kris and Jari-Matti also lost a lot of time on that stage: we knew that it was going to rain in the afternoon, but I think it was heavier in that stage than expected. As we’ve seen today and last year as well, anything can happen in this rally, so we need to keep going and try to avoid any further issues.”

Ott Tänak (Driver car 8)

“It was difficult to enjoy the conditions running first on the road, but I felt much better in the car this morning than I did here last year, so the improvements that the team have made to the car have been good. We knew the afternoon would be demanding, as the stages are even rougher on the second pass, and the weather was making it extra tricky. Unfortunately, we had a puncture in the middle stage: it can be a bit of a lottery here and we were unlucky today. Certainly, it was not the day that we were hoping for, but there is still a long way to go so we just need to keep going and see what happens.”

Jari-Matti Latvala (Driver car 10)

“It started well this morning. The time on SS2 was surprisingly good, as I didn’t push hard. Then I drove too carefully on the next one, but we were able to compensate a bit for that with a good time on SS4. The car was going well, although we knew the afternoon will be rougher. In SS5 we lost the rear bumper, it got very noisy in the car and I was struggling to concentrate on the pace-notes: I cut a right-hand corner and we had to drive the end of the stage with a flat tyre. We expected the rain to come more for the final stage than for SS6, and so we had the hard tyres on which was the wrong choice, and we lost a lot of time. But this is rallying, and sometimes these things don’t work out. Now we need to look forward as a lot of things can still happen in this rally.”

Kris Meeke (Driver car 5)

“I had quite a decent loop this morning. The rhythm wasn’t so good on the last stage of the loop, but otherwise it wasn’t bad given my lack of experience here. When the rain came on the second stage of the afternoon, it was really difficult. We were saving two medium tyres for the last stage, when we expected the rain to be worst, and our hard tyres were really worn from the first stage, so when it rained heavily in the middle of the stage, it was like driving on ice. The other two stages were fine, we just lost a lot of time on this one stage. Our speed’s been OK and we’re still here: there’s a long way to go and anything can happen.”

What's next?

Saturday features another loop of three stages run twice, heading west from Marmaris along the Datça Peninsula, with stages hugging the coastline in several places. The distance is shorter than Friday, at just over 110.1 competitive kilometres.

Key stage: Kızlan (SS10 & SS13, 13.30 kilometres)

Martin Järveoja (Co-driver car 8): “This is a completely new stage for this year, and it’s totally different to the others: it’s really wide and quite fast, and pretty smooth in most places. It should be good fun.”