Rally d’Italia-Sardinia became the rally where Jari-Matti Latvala once again would prove his speed. After leading the car-breaking rally from the very first stage until the end, maybe he can throw some water on the fires of all people yelling after Rally of Portugal. Then, everyone seemed to want him replaced in the Ford team… Anyway, I stick to my opinon about the time it takes to create a new star in the WRC, and as I said already in April Latvala’s team-mate Mikko Hirvonen is one of the best evidences ever that a crash-king can soon become a regular and stable podium contender. Now, I guess we can just hope this win comes as a confidence boost for Latvala making him step off just a little but still being fast in the next rallies and allowing for Ford to take back some of Citroen’s big advantage in the manufacturers championship. That would make the WRC a little bit more exciting…

Something that seems to be exciting all the time this year is the production car WRC. In Sardinia, the rally ended with Nasser al-Attiyah leading the field, taking the lead from Patrik Sandell with just 1.5 seconds on the very last stage. Annoying for Sandell, who took over the lead from his countryman Patrik Flodin on Saturday, when Flodin was hit by trouble. This means Al-Attiyah leads the championship with 31pts ahead of Araujo on 29pts and Sandell on 28pts. PWRC will be a tough battle until the end, it seems!

Other interesting things in this rally:

• Loeb is under investigation for a wheel change made on Saturday. Probably the subject of investigation is if the car was moving at any time when Loeb or Elena wasn’t seated. If so – this would be against the rules and should be punished, as with Duval in Japan a few years ago. This means, Loeb may lose his position…
• Petter Solberg caught the third place, ahead of Sordo (who retired after turbo problems) and Loeb who took the fourth place. Loeb was really happy with his new car spec after shakedown, and seemed to settle well with it during the weekend after some overheating problems on stage one. Now, the big question is what Citroen will do… I’ll make a separate post about that since it’s really an interesting question.
• Despite having ran Cyprus a few months ago, Sardinia seems to be the most car-breaking even of the season so far… (Henning, Rautenbach, Sordo, Ogier, Loeb’s puncture, Petter’s  [and all the others'] overheating)