The following crews entered the rally. The event was open to crews competing in the World Rally Championship, World Rally Championship-2, WRC-2 Pro and privateer entries not registered to score points in any championship. A total of twenty-three entries were received, with ten crews entered with World Rally Cars and five entered the World Rally Championship-2. Only one crew was nominated to score points in the Pro class.
All the stages are located in the state of Guanajuato.[1] Compared with the 2018 edition, the route of the 2019 edition was 27.98 km (17.39 mi) shorter.[10] The Duarte — Derramadero stage was removed. Instead, the Mesa Cuata stage joined the itinerary.[1]
The 2019 edition of Rally Mexico started with a curtailment of the opening stage due to an irreparable damaged jump.[11]Andreas Mikkelsen took a short-lived lead on Friday morning, but the Norwegian lost his lead to Sébastien Ogier as they hit a rock and damaged the suspension. Teammate Dani Sordo also forced to retire from the day due to electrical issue. Jari-Matti Latvala was running in fourth before retiring with alternator failure. The other major retirement of the first leg was Teemu Suninen, who went off the road in his Fiesta. The young Finn retired from the rally in the end.[12]
It turned out that Ogier was a lucky man. Despite a front-left puncture, he still reduced his time loss to just twenty seconds as his teammate Esapekka Lappi went off the road and caused the red flag, which saved his rally-winning chances.[13] However, Kris Meeke wasn't as fortunate, as he suffered a puncture on the following Otates stage, with damaged suspension, which dropped him from the lead down to fifth place.[14] Eventually, Ogier net his fifth Mexico victory with a power stage victory, surpassed Thierry Neuville in the drivers' standings in second, narrowing to four points off the championship leader Ott Tänak, who finished second overall, with Elfyn Evans got his first podium finish of the season.[5]
The rally was not without controversy however. The damaged ramp was met with criticism, deeming it to be unnecessarily dangerous to both drivers and spectators,[15] and allegations of cheating surfaced with Kris Meeke accusing Citroen of abusing red flag rules to give Ogier an unfair advantage;[16] Meeke would later retract his statement in an apology.[17]
The only WRC-2 Pro driver Łukasz Pieniążek was unable to complete Friday as he crashed out in SS6.[18] After re-entering the rally, he enjoyed a trouble-free day and eventually won the category.[19][6]
Eighteen-year-old driver Marco Bulacia Wilkinson edged Benito Guerra in 9.8 seconds. The two dominated the category in two Fabia R5s as they won all eight stages of Friday combined.[18] On the leg 2, Guerra surpassed Wilkinson and ended the day with a lead over three and a half minutes. Heller brothers both failed to finished the day. Alberto Heller retired with broken steering, while Pedro Heller retired with a mechanical issue.[19] They restarted in the final leg, but Pedro Heller retired from the rally because of a mechanical issue. The event went into Guerra's pocket in the end, which is his first home victory in his career.[6]
^Crews who did not start were awarded a notional time based on that of Kris Meeke and Sebastian Marshall, the last crew to complete the test before it was stopped with an 1:01.2.[11]
^Łukasz Pieniążek and Kamil Heller retired from the day in SS6.[18] They re-entered at the start of the second leg. As theirs was the only WRC 2-Pro entry, there was no stage winner or class leader from SS6 to SS10.
^ abThe car of Esapekka Lappi and Janne Ferm was stuck in a dangerous spot, which caused the stage to be interrupted. As a result, all cars except World Rally Cars were given a 31:51.7 to their times.[13]
.jpg)
