2013 World Rally Championship leader Sébastien Ogier says he's unhappy with his Qualifying performance for Rally Mexico in which he finished fifth overall in his Polo R WRC.

Ogier will start from ninth on the road: Qualifying winner Mikko Hirvonen, who had first pick of starting positions, chose thirteenth to start in his Citroën DS3 WRC.

Ogier says the hard tyres he selected were the wrong choice, and running first through the stage was probably not an advantage:

“I am not happy with that qualifying. We had the disadvantage of having to open the stage."

"We took the safe choice with the hard tyre compound. What we didn’t expect was that there would be quite such a big difference between the hard and the soft."

"Qualifying is very important here at the Rally Mexico, in order to give yourself a good choice of starting position. We still have that."

"Our goal is to finish the rally and get a good result. Compared to our rivals, we will have an extra set of fresh tyres to use on the special stages.”

VW teammate Jari-Matti Latvala finished seventh fastest, and will start from seventh position:

“Obviously the soft tyres have produced the better times in qualifying, while we opted for the harder compound."

"At first glance, starting from seventh does not look ideal. However, we will have to wait and see how the rally pans out – it could ultimately be an advantage to have more hard tyres left. After all, the number of tyres is restricted to 28."

"Our priority remains to use our first gravel rally to close the gap on our rivals in terms of experience with the Polo. We can only do that if we complete the full distance."

"As there are a lot of stones and rocks lurking on the stages of the Rally Mexico, we concentrated hard on documenting these perils very precisely in our pace notes during our preparations. We feel well prepared and are looking forward to the spectacular start in Guanajuato’s old town.”