It wasn't a challenging day for Jari-Matti Latvala. The Finn won the first four stages on the final day of Rally Sweden and cruised to his first victory of the 2014 World Rally Championship season by 53.6 seconds over his Volkswagen teammate Andreas Mikkelsen. By winning stage seventeen, Latvala reached three hundred stage wins in his World Rally career.
Mikkelsen held off a hard fought charge from his fellow Norwegian Mads Østberg for second with 5.9 seconds separating them in the end. Østberg did win the power stage and picked up three more points while Latvala took second on the power stage and Mikko Hirvonen finished third on the power stage and finished fourth overall, nearly two and a half minutes back of Latvala.
Ott Tänak finished fifth in his first rally of the season, just over three minutes back of Latvala. Sébastien Ogier recovered from a disastrous start on day three to finish sixth. Henning Solberg finished seventh ahead of the top Swede Pontus Tidemand in eighth. Irishman Craig Breen finished ninth on his season debut. Northern Irish driver Kris Meeke rounded out the points in tenth.
Robert Kubica rally went from bad to worse on stage twenty when another snow bank caught the Polish driver. He would finish twenty-fourth. Hyundai restarted today after both Thierry Neuville and Juho Hänninen had front right issues on day three. Hänninen finished nineteenth with Neuville in twenty-eighth.
This is Latvala's third Rally Sweden victory and his ninth career rally victory. The Finn has forty points and takes a five point lead over Ogier with the win and second on the power stage. Østberg moves up to third in the points, ten back of Latvala. Mikkelsen moves up to fourth, six points back of fellow Norwegian Østberg. Bryan Bouffier is fifth with eighteen points despite not competing in Sweden. Meeke drops to sixth. Hirvonen's fourth place finish puts his seventh on the championship table with thirteen points. Fellow M-Sport Ford drivers Tänak and Elfyn Evans take the next two positions. The Estonian Tänak jumped Evans in the standings after the Welshman retired. Henning Solberg's seventh place finish puts him tenth in points with six points.
The next round of the World Rally Championship takes place across the Atlantic with the teams heading to Rally Mexico March 6-9th.
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