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Toyota chief engineer Tom Fowler says the sensor failure which spoiled Ott Tanak's Rally Mexico shakedown on Thursday is not related to the overheating problems experienced previously by the team.

Tanak's Yaris WRC was halted on his first run at the three-mile shakedown stage, but because the championship leader was not blocking the road, the organisers continued to run the test and Toyota was forced to wait before it could retrieve the stricken car.

In an effort to speed discovery of the problem, Tanak's co-driver Martin Jarveoja ran one kilometre to the end of the test carrying the telemetry data card to give to the team.

Fowler told Autosport: "If this had been on the rally, we would have been able to give Ott advice which would have allowed him to continue. But because it was shakedown, the most sensible thing to do was to stop.

"Basically, the engine lost contact with one of the sensors."

The car pulled up after the second of two watersplashes, but Fowler said that was not a contributing factor.

"We don't think it's anything to do with that and it's nothing to do with issues we've had here before. It's not a major problem at all."

Tanak finally made it out for a single run at shakedown and, when asked about the problems from last season, Tanak's team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala said he had every confidence there would be no repeat of the previous issues.

"I am 100% sure we have this fixed," he said.

"We made a big step with the car and the cooling in Turkey last year and we made another big step before this rally. It won't be a problem."

Citroen struck by transport delays

Meanwhile, Citroen's Rally Mexico preparations were interrupted when the boat transporting its recce cars and spares from Europe was delayed.

The boat was due to sail from Le Havre to Veracruz in Mexico, but suffered engine problems and is not set to arrive until Friday.

The French manufacturer was instead forced to fly its kit to Mexico in order to participate in the third round of the championship.

A team spokesman told Autosport: "The first boat [which suffered engine problems] was supposed to arrive in Mexico on February 19 with 19.5 tonnes of kit.

"The second boat [which contains the original kit] was supposed to arrive around March 4, but that has been delayed by bad sea conditions. As soon as we knew of the trouble on the first boat we flew 15.6 tonnes of kit, including the recce cars and spares, out.

"We are still waiting for some kit, but we have everything we need for the event - we're just missing the usual service park tents and things like that."

M-Sport's boat was also delayed, but arrived into port on Monday, just in time for service park set-up.