Sweden : Subaru World Rally Team - Leg 1The Subaru World Rally Team came to Sweden to secure more solid points finishes and ended the first leg of the event with one car firmly in the top three and the other one just outside the top eight. Petter Solberg/Phil Mills seized
the outright lead of the rally on the opening stage of the day, and stayed among the frontrunners, ending the leg third overall.
Chris Atkinson/Glenn Macneall planned to make a cautious start to what is only their third snow rally, but steadily upped their pace during the day and finished leg one just 3sec away from a points-scoring position.
Petter Solberg
"It's really, really tough on those stages, but I'm enjoying the fact that I am fighting in the top three. It was nice to lead a rally again on this morning's stages. Our current set is using up the tyres too quickly, that seems to be the same for Chris and I, but we can use the experience today to make different choices tomorrow.”
Chris Atkinson
“We're a little bit further back that we'd like, but it's not the end of the world. We knew it would be a tough event so we've concentrated on keeping it tidy and driving consistently.
Perhaps we were a little too cautious in some places but there are lots of quick locals out here trying to prove a point, I guess by Sunday we'll see how the strategy works.”
Richard Taylor, Team Managing Director
“We're very pleased with the whole team performance today; Petter particularly has done an excellent job. It's great to be getting fastest stage times and competing at the top of the leaderboard again, and I think it's good for the whole WRC that the top ten is so close together. It's a very competitive event. Both cars have run reliably and our new BFGoodrich tyres have worked well for us, although we need to make a few more tweaks to the car to optimise the set-up on these tyres. But it is extremely positive to have led a rally in only the second event of our relationship with BFGoodrich and we're looking forward to the next couple of days.”
Subaru WRT
