Jari-Matti Latvala believes he has make a breakthrough with the handling of his Polo R World Rally Car that will help him on the next round in Mexico.
The Finn made the discovery on the final day of Rally Sweden, an event he started with high hopes of success but which effectively ended on Friday when he got his car stuck in a snow bank.
The set-up changes were made in time for Sunday’s stages and brought immediate results, helping him claim a stage win and two top five times before the rally concluded.
“I’ve been running a rear end set-up that is far too hard, that’s the problem,” Latvala told wrc.com. “It’s good when it’s really, really, high speed, but there is no traction and it doesn’t give you the grip. It looks like I went a bit wrong with the set-up in testing - it’s been distracting in the rally.”
Latvala believes the problem arose because he was trying to transfer the settings of his 2014-spec Polo, with which he won Rally Sweden last year, to the 2015 model introduced at Rallye Monte-Carlo.
He said: “The new and old Polo are different cars with different set-ups. Basically I was trying to go with the set-up that I was running in the old Polo and it doesn’t necessarily work in the new one. The geometry is different.”
“It’s definitely it’s a positive ahead of Mexico, because I now know the base set-up for the car. This is where I need to stay and work from with the car,” he added.