Here’s some quotes from some of the WRC drivers after Rally Argentina.

Heres what the Qatar M-Sport Drivers said…

Evgeny Novikov finished fourth: “To be honest, I think that it was all over after the third stage today [SS13]. We were pushing hard, but Jari-Matti took a lot of time out of us and we understood then that we should let the podium go and concentrate on getting to the end of the event.”

“I backed off in the Power Stage [SS14] and maybe because of that I lost a bit of concentration and had a spin in the stage – not because we were pushing; because I slowed down too much. But it was never our plan to fight on that stage so it wasn’t too much of a drama.”

“Of course it would have been nice to have come away with a podium, but fourth place is still a very good result for us on this rally. I think it was the best we could do today, and I want to thank Jari-Matti for the fight – I really enjoyed it and I’m sure everybody else did too!”

Thierry Neuville was fifth: “As I said before the rally, our strategy this weekend was to have a clever event and make sure that we got to the end without any problems – and that’s what we did. It was not so easy to keep my foot away from the throttle the whole time, but it paid off and the result is a good one for us. I don’t think we could have done much better.”

“I wasn’t so happy with the set-up today and that is something that we’ll have to work on for the next events. I’m still learning with the car, so hopefully we’ll have some good testing before Greece and we can work on getting that right before then.”

Mads Østberg finished seventh: “It was a difficult start to the rally. We were struggling with the set-up on Thursday morning but we made some changes in [midday] service and it felt better straight away. Unfortunately we hit a stone which meant that we couldn’t take full advantage.”

“Restarting on Friday, we set a really good pace. The speed was good and the car was working really well which meant we were able to climb right back up to seventh – so that was a good day for us.”

“Today [Saturday] has been all about preserving the tyres for the Power Stage, but I couldn’t really find a good rhythm. I tried to push [on the Power Stage], but I wasn’t as confident as I had been the day before and had to settle for fourth.”

“All in all, I think we have done some good stages, but with having to Rally 2 we weren’t able to fight for a good result. We know that we have the pace, so we will be back pushing for a good result in Greece.”

Abdulaiz Al-Kuwari won WRC2: “This is a very tough rally – up until the very last kilometre you have to keep total concentration to ensure you finish. Luckily for us we had a very good lead starting today so we could afford to lose one, two, even five minutes.”

“We are now leading the championship, and to be honest that’s far more than we were hoping for! We spoke with Malcolm Wilson before the season and the aim was to finish in the top-five. We know we are not the fastest in the category and in Europe there are a lot of fast drivers so we will wait and see what happens in Greece.”

“I would like to thank all the M-Sport mechanics for a fantastic job this weekend. Every morning they gave us a car which felt like a brand new Fiesta. It’s a great pleasure for me to work with M-Sport and thanks to them, we are able to achieve results like this. I’m sure Malcolm is happy too to see his car win by so much! I also want to thank Seashore for all their support – without them this would not be possible.”

VW Drivers;

Sébastien Ogier – pictured – finished second overall: “Second place is a brilliant result in terms of the world championship and our success was down to the whole team. I need to say a special thank-you to my crew this time – they were a great support. It was an incredibly challenging and difficult rally and my own performance wasn’t entirely flawless.”

“It’s a shame that I couldn’t keep fighting it out against Sébastien Loeb right to the end. I would like to congratulate him on winning.”

“Now it’s time for me to look to the future. We’ve got a test to do before the next rally in Greece. We’ll make further improvements to the Polo R WRC then so that we can fight for first place again in four weeks’ time.”

Jari-Matti Latvala ended third on the podium: “Today was the best day’s rallying since I joined Volkswagen. The team spirit, the car – everything reached a whole new level today, including the driver. I’m absolutely thrilled to be standing on the podium for the first time in Argentina. Things often haven’t gone that well here in the last few years, so I’m really pleased to have achieved my goal. The rally was very exciting and varied. Especially in the final phase, we gave our all to secure third place.”

“All in all, finishing second and third is a great result for the whole team.”

Andreas Mikkelsen was eighth overall: “Today was quite a finale and we had several more thrilling duels. We really enjoyed the day and the whole rally. Everything is moving in the right direction – our new system for the pace notes, our changes to the set-up and the results of the special stages.”

“We’re learning more with every metre we cover, and I feel really at home in the Polo R WRC. We’ve still got lots of ideas about what we can do in future rallies to improve further. On Friday afternoon, we deliberately set out to complete the special in a good time. We didn’t expect to record exactly the same time as my team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala though. Unfortunately, we asked too much of the car in the process.”

“It is my job to combine speed with reliability in the coming rallies. I’m already looking forward to tackling that challenge.”