While Sebastian Loeb and his Citroen may mave dominated (yet again) the World Rally Drivers championship, its the Ford team that have shown the greatest strength in depth. A fact that was underlined by this weekend’s Rally New Zealand where Marcus Gronholm dominated and clinched the  World Rally manufacturer’s title for Ford.

With Gronholm’s teammate Mikko Hirvonen taking a dutiful second, 56 seconds behind, the team enjoyed a perfect weekend, having run one-two for the entire duration of the event.

MotoGP ace Valentino Rossi eventually finished 11th, having got quicker and quicker throughout the event and enjoying every second of it. A few small spins apart, he drove a flawless rally. Seventh-fastest time in Saturday’s superspecial, quicker than the factory Subarus was perhaps the highlight of Rossi’s performance.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Rally. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.