Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“It’s great to be here in Latvia and in Riga to start the rally. It’s a nice city with a good feeling and it’s always good when we can come to new places with the WRC. We had a good start in the first stage tonight, which looked interesting for the drivers and with lots of spectators. The tyre choice was difficult but it seemed to work out for us. Everybody is facing something completely new at this level this weekend and in shakedown this morning we already saw some moments. On roads like this you want to go flat-out but there are tricky places: so you need to make sure your pacenotes are working, that you can trust them and that you’re able to attack these unfamiliar roads. Our drivers are happy and feeling good and we’re looking forward to the real stages tomorrow.”

Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“It’s cool to be back in Latvia. For me it feels a bit like coming home: I have really good memories of doing rallies in this country at the start of my career and we’ll try to make some new ones this weekend. There’s a good following for rallying in Latvia and it was good to see a lot of fans in Riga tonight. It was quite a long stage to start the rally, and not the easiest with gravel tyres and gravel setup on asphalt, but it looks like it was OK. Conditions in shakedown were quite tricky and we tried to work with the car to get some more grip and a better feeling. We still have a few options for the rally, let’s see how it goes.”

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s always nice to come to new rallies. This one is fast, similar to Poland or Estonia, and I’m looking forward to the challenge through the weekend. Being confident with your pacenotes will be one key thing: as we saw in shakedown already, there are a lot of poles placed to prevent cutting, which can make the profile of the corner quite unnatural, so it’s important to be confident with that. Tyre choice could also be quite difficult in some moments, especially where we will mix first and second pass conditions in the same stages during the afternoon. Tonight was a different start to usual: a bit faster, longer and wider than we’d normally have for a super special stage. For us it was a clean run but hard to find the rhythm.”

Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“Coming to a new rally like this is always fun. I like this kind of challenge and I’m excited to see what we can do this weekend. To have missed Poland is not ideal in terms of preparation for these fast roads, but I’m still feeling good in the car at high speed in the kilometres I’ve done so far in shakedown and also in the little test we did in Finland on Sunday, so I’m still targeting a strong result. It’s crucial to be on it straight away, even tonight in this first stage on the circuit: it was a long stage and quite slippery with gravel tyres on asphalt, so it was possible to make some differences. I didn’t drive perfectly but the time doesn’t look so bad.”

Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s nice to come here to Latvia and a brand-new rally for the WRC. With all-new stages it will be a big challenge and we are looking forward to that. It will not be an easy rally, with only some parts driven twice, so it will be difficult to make the right tyre choice. But I will try to do my best, to enjoy it and to push. Shakedown felt quite good: we adjusted the car a bit and it felt much better. I’m feeling a lot more confident than in Poland, so it’s going in a good direction. This first stage is totally different to the others but long enough to make a difference time-wise so we needed to push. It was hard to say which tyre was correct, but we had fun.”

End of day one (Thursday):
1 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) 7m28.5s
2 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +2.4s
= Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +2.4s
4 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +2.9s
5 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +3.9s
6 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID) +5.6s
7 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +5.9s
8 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +8.4s
9 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Hyundai i20 N Rally1 HYBRID) +10.6s
10 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1 HYBRID) +11.0s
(Results as of 21:00 on Thursday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)

What's next?
Friday’s route is the longest of the rally featuring 120.92 competitive kilometres and takes the crews north-west from Riga. There is no mid-day service, just tyre-fitting zones before the morning and afternoon loops. While the first two stages of the morning – Milzkalne and Tukums – are repeated in the afternoon, the third, Andumi, is significantly modified for the second pass to form Strazde, and is followed by the Talsi test run just once at the end of the day.