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Ford boss Malcolm Wilson says Australia win brought team closer together

Malcolm Wilson says that Ford's Rally Australia victory has brought the team closer together than ever before

Ford relied on Jari-Matti Latvala slowing down on the penultimate stage of the Coffs Harbour event to let Mikko Hirvonen through to take his second win of the season. That result shifted Hirvonen back into second place in the championship, 15 points behind Sebastien Loeb and 14 ahead of Sebastien Ogier.

Wilson said: "Everybody has a spring in their step again after this win. From a motivation and morale perspective, it couldn't have come at a better time. Don't get me wrong, nobody was struggling for motivation, but we had put so much work in on so many rallies and we'd come so close to winning so many of those rallies. It's just a huge relief to win again, it's felt like a very long time since Sweden.

"When we started out with such a competitive package and then we had so many events without a victory, I have to be honest, you do begin to question yourself a little bit. You can't help but ask, what is it? What are we doing wrong? In reality, when you're losing a rally by two tenths of a second, you're doing nothing wrong, there's nothing in it. If we'd been losing the rallies by half a minute or something similar, then you could look for something to pinpoint where that time loss is, but not with these gaps. I have to admit, it's been very hard for a few months."

Wilson paid tribute to the way Hirvonen and Latvala had worked together, adding: "Those guys were under a lot of pressure in Australia, but they pulled together for the team and they made my job a lot easier.

"We had clear guidelines from the start of the season - they started as joint number one at the beginning of the year, but Jari's had some problems and since then he has been the perfect team player."

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