Norway : Citroen Sport - ShakedownAfter last weekend's Swedish Rally, the second wintry fixture of the 2007 World Championship got underway this morning with the traditional Thursday morning shakedown.
The stage employed for this final system checks was located
just a handful of kilometres north of Hamar, the Norwegian round's host town.
At 8.00am, the Citroën C4 WRCs of
Sebastien Loeb/Daniel Elena and Dani Sordo/Marc Martí pulled out of the service park based at the Viking Ship ice-skating rink used during the 1994 Winter Olympics. For the two Twin Chevrons crews, the 3.5km test between the villages of Lykset and Alfstad were a chance to fine-tune the set-up of their respective Citroën C4 WRCs for the stages of the 2007 Rally Norway which feature numerous differences to those contested last weekend just across the border in Sweden.
"The Norwegian stages are globally slower and there are more junctions," reported Loeb as the six mechanics authorised to work on his car busied themselves with the usual checks nearby.
"Our aim this morning is to optimise grip.
During recce, we came across numerous bumpy portions so we will need to take that into account in the set-up of the car."
Meanwhile, Dani Sordo returned to the Citroën Sport base in the service park after two runs to give his first impressions of the morning.
"We didn't want to take any risks because the shakedown stage is very tricky. The stage is very narrow with icy ruts that you're best-advised to stick to, otherwise you run the risk of hitting a tree or the fence of one of the nearby houses. This morning enabled us to fine-tune the set-up of our C4 WRC. We worked notably on the suspension which is likely to have a harder job on its hands than it did last weekend in Sweden."
Citroen Sport
