Rally Guanajuato Mexico gave Mads Östberg and co-driver Jonas Andersson a couple of challenges, but overall the duo finished as number four.

The rally started out good for Östberg with a third place Thursday night. Throughout the second day he held the position and kept pushing. But when the third place slipped half way through Saturdays stages and Jari-Matti Latvala kept his speed to a maximum, team Adapta changed tactics.
– We saw that something else than speed had to happen to beat him. The setup on the car wasn’t optimal, something we changed on every service. So rather than speed up and taking chances, we agreed to use the rally first and formal as a test, Morten Östberg, team manager of Adapta World Rally Team says.

That was a move the team wouldn’t have to regret they made. Östberg and Andersson kept their speed and good driving and secured the fifth place all the way. But during Sunday morning’s second stage, WRC’s longest stage consisting of 54 kilometres, Östberg had a puncture. With Ott Tänak only 1:40 behind him the duo didn’t risk the time it would take to change tyre and decided to keep on driving.
– It was a couple of dramatic minutes. When you drive with a puncture tyre for so long things can happen to the car. Luckily for us Mads managed to manoeuvre the car to the finish line without damaging the car at all, the team manager says.

But on the same stage Jari-Matti Latvala rolled and had to retire from the rally because of too much damage on the car. Petter Solberg climbed up to third place and Östberg to a fourth overall.

On the last stage of Rally Mexico, the power stage, another positive thing occurred. Mads came third, giving him his first power stage point.
– Mads’ pleased, the team is pleased – everyone is pleased. Mads has had a good rally giving him a lot of experience we can use in other rallies this year, Morten Östberg says.