Norway : Subaru World Rally Team - FinishThe Subaru World Rally completed its objective of finishing in the points on Rally Norway. Petter Solberg/Phil Mills finished fourth, the duo's best result of the season so far, after the three days of snow rallying. On home ground,
Petter drove very conservatively to ensure he came through the rally in a strong position. Although Chris Atkinson/Glenn Macneall were out of contention for points, they continued to gather experience of competing in snow and ice and completed the rally in 19th position.
Richard Taylor, SWRT MD
“Of course we would have liked to have seen Petter on the podium, but our objective when we came here was to get a solid points finish, and we've succeeded in doing that. Unfortunately the tyre nominations we made a fortnight ago didn't give us enough choice of long-studded tyres to enable Petter to compete properly with Henning today. Chris has had a tough rally and the car has not felt quite right to him, but he's learned a lot. This is a unique snow event, very different to his previous experience in Sweden, and he has come away with a lot more knowledge for the future. Overall, we're reasonably happy with the performance of our 2006 car on its last event and now look forward to the debut of our 2007 car in Mexico.”
Petter Solberg
“It was a shame that Henning got past me, but I'm still happy with this result in the circumstances. We couldn't have gone any quicker. We have been very realistic about what we can achieve on this rally and we have followed our strategy accordingly. The main thing was for us to finish in the points and not make any mistakes.
This was the final rally with the WRC2006 and the points we've got here are very important for the season. It has been an incredible experience to drive these stages in front of so many spectators and see so many Norwegian flags.”
Chris Atkinson
“It's been a tough rally for us, although there's no doubt that without the mistake on Saturday morning we would have been in the points. I have struggled a bit with my confidence this weekend compared to Sweden. I haven't been able to have the same feeling with the car. Now this rally is over we can start to look forward to Mexico and the first rally with the new WRC2007. We can make some steps forward now.”
Matthieu Bonardel, BFGoodrich Rally Manager
“It was a good result to be close to the podium in the final rally for this car. This was the team's third rally using BFGoodrich tyres and the second on snow and ice, although it was a completely different event compared to Sweden, where there was less grip overall for drivers. Petter managed to secure a good fourth and that leaves him in a good position to climb the next three steps of the podium with the new Impreza rally car. We are looking forward to working with Subaru to develop the potential of the 2007 Impreza on BFGoodrich tyres.”
Subaru World Rally Team
