Heikkilä drove to second place in the highly competitive WRC2 class. Earlier in his career, Heikkilä had been on the podium three times in the WRC3 class during the 2021 season.
The class victory went to Sweden’s Oliver Solberg. Solberg, driving a Skoda, defeated Heikkilä, who competed in a Toyota Rally2 car, by almost 40 seconds, leaving no room for excuses.
“I’m quite satisfied with this. Of course, the goal is always to win, but there was no chance this time. Oliver was just too fast,” Heikkilä noted.
“It was a pretty good weekend without any major issues. There were a few times where my driving could have been better, but there were no problems with the car. The car worked brilliantly, and it was fun to drive,” Heikkilä continued.
Heikkilä has lost two European Rally Championship wins due to terrible misfortune over the past year. He also had bad luck in the Rally Estonia a couple of weeks ago, when the Finnish driver had to retire due to a technical fault. Now he has second places in both the World Rally and European Rally Championships, as earlier in the summer in Sweden, Heikkilä also finished second, with Solberg taking the victory then as well.
“It has been a bit of a test, but hopefully luck won’t completely abandon me. It’s nice to be able to drive in Finland and try to improve even more,” Heikkilä summarised.
Heikkilä secured second place after a tough battle against the super talent Sami Pajari. The silver position was claimed by Heikkilä with a margin of 7.4 seconds.
“It was definitely a nice thing. Sami also drives very fast, so winning this battle wasn’t easy.”
At the beginning of August, in the Rally Finland, Heikkilä will once again be chasing at least a podium finish. The prospect of his first career win at the WRC level is also enticing.
“Feeling good about Finland. We’ll take a little break and then get back to action in about a week. It’s nice to drive in front of the home crowd,” Heikkilä summed up.
“We’ll do a little test before the rally. Just a short trial to make sure everything works. We’ve been driving rallies a lot recently, so no need for excessive testing.”
WRC2 class results in the Rally Latvia:
| POS | Driver | Team | Time |
| 1. | Oliver Solberg | Skoda | 2:40:25.5 |
| 2. | Mikko Heikkilä | Toyota | +37.4 |
| 3. | Sami Pajari | Toyota | +44.8 |
| 4. | Fabrizio Zaldivar | Skoda | +3:01.8 |
| 5. | William Creighton | Ford | +4:27.7 |
| 6. | Roberto Dapra | Skoda | +4:45.3 |
| 7. | Gregor Jeets | Toyota | +9:22.4 |
