Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala isn’t ruling Kalle Rovanperä out of winning Rally Sweden, even if he trails rally leader Craig Breen by 31.1 seconds going into Saturday.
The reigning World Rally champion struggled with the grip on several stages on Friday as he cleaned the road for the drivers starting behind him.
It meant that other than winning Friday’s final stage, Rovanperä failed to finish any other in the top three and ended the leg fifth overall.
But with the road order changing around on Saturday, Latvala believes that his talisman could get himself back into the lead battle – it will just come down to whether he can look after his tires well enough.
“I think he felt himself a little bit that maybe he lost it, but I wouldn’t say that completely,” Latvala said to DirtFish when asked if Rovanperä had a chance to fight back.
“OK, it’s a lot, 30 seconds. But here, what is a bit different with Sweden, compared to Finland – if it was Rally Finland, no chance – but the thing that always makes a bit of difference here is that always on second passage, if you run out of studs and how is the tire condition you might start to see bigger differences.
“And suddenly you can catch up because the tire condition is somebody having better tires and can push more, and so this might open the window a bit then again tomorrow.
“I think we still have a small chance.”
But what does Rovanperä think?
“Of course, we tomorrow try to fight with the guys in front,” he said.
“Hopefully the better starting place will give us a place to really show the speed and fight.
“I think Ott [Tänak, 28.5s ahead] is too far, but of course we never know. We’ll see what we can do.”
