Phil Mills talks of this morning's shakedownAfter setting the pace in this morning's shakedown ahead of the second round of the World Rally Championship in Sweden, Chris Atkinson and co-driver Phil Mills are looking forward to the main event which kicks off this evening.
However,
unlike last year, this Rally is a full snow affair and the pace is likely to be determined to some extent by the running order.
“Generally things look really good," Mills explained. "The stages are in excellent condition and there's plenty of snow around. Last night we had another few centimetres and if this sort of pattern continues, then the character of the event has the chance to change quite considerably. Despite the spiked snow tyres we'll be using, a few centimetres of fresh, loose snow can make a lot of difference to speeds through the stages."
"This morning's shakedown was a good example - organisers hadn't scraped the fresh show off and, as a result, the first few cars had to content with a loose layer of powder and were as much as five seconds slower than those who ran later.
In these circumstances it's better to be running further down the order, perhaps as the fifth or sixth car, and get the benefit of a cleaner road...."
"We did three runs at shakedown today, and after the passage of 20 cars, our time was eight seconds faster! The cleaning effect is similar to the one we encounter on the ball-bearing gravel of Rally Australia. But the situation isn't completely predictable - if more than three or four centimetres of snow have fallen, then organisers will probably clean the stages before they are run. They literally drag a metal blade along the route to remove the loose powder." "On a freshly scraped road most drivers would prefer to be the first car though – it makes an enormous difference. Depending on how things turn out, we could well see some back markers putting in some really good times.”
Source SWRT
