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Ford defends decision to keep pushing on longest stage of Rally Mexico

Ford team director Malcolm Wilson and Jari-Matti Latvala have defended the decision to keep pushing on the longest stage of Rally Mexico - the stage where the Finn crashed out of third place

Latvala led Rally Mexico earlier in the event, but damaged suspension when he hit a rock on the opening day and then suffered a puncture while trying to fight back on day two.

The Rally Sweden winner was 1m16s behind Mikko Hirvonen's second place with 43 competitive miles of the event remaining.

Latvala was fastest through the first eight split sectors on the Guanajatito test and had taken 16 seconds out of Hirvonen when he was distracted by Evgeny Novikov's crashed car and then rolled his own Fiesta RS WRC.

Asked if he had considered slowing Latvala down earlier in the stage, Wilson said: 'No. We'd agreed what we were going to do and we'd sent him Mikko's [last split] time in the stage.

"We gave him Mikko's 25km split time just to keep him [Hirvonen] on his toes. We had also given him the exact distance to Novikov's car. This was a mistake."

Before going into the stage Latvala said: "We have to keep the pressure to Mikko. On the last round, I had a puncture close to the end of the rally and this could have cost me the event ' these things can happen."

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