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Hirvonen: I need to be braver

Mikko Hirvonen has vowed to take a braver and more ruthless approach to the World Rally Championship this year as he bids to make up for the disappointment of losing out to Sebastien Loeb in 2009

The Ford driver missed out to his Citroen rival by just one point at the end of last season - and thinks he needs to push harder for wins in 2010 if he is going to grab the crown.

Speaking to AUTOSPORT about his feelings heading into 2010, Hirvonen said: "I feel like this year, at the start, I felt we would fight for the title. Now I'm thinking I don't want to lose it again.

"I'm just going to win it or bin it on every rally and see what happens. I can't wait to get started again, but I still need to keep my consistency. We were on the podium 11 out of 12 rallies, we need to keep this.

"In a way it's more frustrating that I didn't do a single mistake and he made three and still managed to pull it away. But then again, fair play, he won seven rallies and I won only four, so I need to win more."

Hirvonen is due to sit down with his Ford bosses in the next few weeks to reflect on the events of last year - and plan for the forthcoming title assault. He reckons both he and the team need to play harder with their tactics.

"For me, this season, I made lots of small mistakes and we [the team] made small mistakes with things like the tyres in Cyprus (not running buffed tyres)," he explained.

"And, unfortunately, you can still play a lot with road position. We need to be more ruthless with that. This is not what I want to do, but Citroen play tactics so many times this season.

"I tried it only one time in Sardinia and it went wrong. I tried to slow down, but didn't leave enough space and I gave away 20 seconds for nothing. But all of those things, you just have to do it.

"Citroen play tactics many times and they get many, many points by doing that, but in the end nobody cares, they are the champions after the season and that's it."

Hirvonen thinks his whole mindset has to change if he is to beat Loeb.

"I need to be more brave on small change in the car. Norway was an example on the second day. I might have won the rally, I could have been closer to Sebastien, but on the Saturday, I thought I didn't want make changes; I thought 'If it goes wrong we can lose more time.'

"But then we did make the change on the Sunday and it did work and I was able to catch time back to him. On small things like that, I need to be braver."

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