Norway : Subaru World Rally Team - Leg 2The Subaru World Rally Team ended the second day of Rally Norway in a podium position, thanks to Petter Solberg, who battled through fierce weather to move into third place behind Mikko Hirvonen and
Marcus Gronholm.
The Norwegian
and navigator Phil Mills stuck to their pre-rally strategy and maintained a steady pace, which paid dividends when they moved past a troubled
Sebastien Loeb on SS12. Chris Atkinson and Glenn Macneall endured a tough start to the day and dropped out of the top ten after they had a spin and got stuck in a snowdrift.
After that the Australian duo focused on building snow rally experience.
Petter Solberg
“I thought there would be a chance that one of the guys in front of me would hit trouble because they were all setting a very fast pace. Our strategy of taking it easy has worked, although since the Mountain stage earlier today we have had some traction problems. I struggled, particularly on the last two stages of the day. I've been fighting so hard to set some good times and we made it to the end of the leg and now we can try to solve this issue. My plan for tomorrow is to make my third place secure. Henning is quite close because I lost a lot of time to him on the Mountain stage, but I hope we can keep him behind us tomorrow. It depends who has the right studded tyres for the conditions.”
Chris Atkinson
“Today has been quite tricky for us.
I've never driven in that much snow before. We tried to maintain our position from the start of the leg but a small mistake cost us some time because we went off and took a while to get out of a snow bank. In these conditions I haven't been had quite the level of confidence that I need to set fast times. It's disappointing to have lost so much time, but the task for Sunday is to finish all four stages and get some more experience of driving on snow and ice.”
Richard Taylor, SWRT MD
“We're delighted to see Petter up onto the podium now. It certainly looks like he will have an interesting battle with his brother tomorrow, because the pair of them are separated by just under ten seconds. Chris has had a difficult day with a car that hasn't felt right underneath him. It has been quite hard work and he's dropped quite a long way back after the off on the opening stage this morning. The task for him for the rest of the rally will be to learn as much as he can about driving in these conditions.”
Subaru World Rally Team
