Mexico : Subaru World Rally Team - Leg 1The Subaru World Rally Team's first day of competition with the new Impreza WRC2007 was an encouraging one.
Petter Solberg/Phil Mills led for most of the leg and Chris Atkinson/Glenn Macneall ended the day with a stage win
and in a strong second position overall.
Solberg netted three fastest stage times in the morning, but his impressive charge ended cruelly when a loss of engine oil forced him to stop after SS5.
Atkinson ran with the leaders from the outset and feels there is even more performance to come from his car on tomorrow's leg.
Chris Atkinson
"I haven't had such a good feeling in the car for a long time, and the pace we've shown today is really good news for the whole team at
Subaru. Of course it's unfortunate about Petter, but if you look at the whole picture it's encouraging nonetheless. It's a bit of a shame that we gave away a bit of time earlier today, but that's just down to fine tuning the car. For some stages it's been good, on others not so good, but that's completely understandable when you consider how fresh this car is. We're a little bit away just now, but improvements will come with experience and we're learning more all the time.”
Petter Solberg
“Good and bad news really. Everything was perfect until about 12km before the finish line of SS5 when the oil light started to blink. I pushed on, but at the end of the stage we had no oil pressure and, it turned out, no oil. And that was it.
It looks like there was a tiny bit of damage to the oil cooler, but that was enough to drain the system. Overall, it's important to note that we had the winning pace, even on the repeated stages, and things like tyre wear and general feeling were very, very good. We were leading the rally here, and I'm sure it won't be long before we're doing that again.”
Richard Taylor, Team Managing Director
"We can take a good deal of encouragement from the team's performance today. For the first five stages we were leading the rally and it went very well for us, realistically, perhaps better than we might have hoped with a brand new car. Naturally it was disappointing to lose Petter's car, but Chris has done an excellent job and holds second place, and that's good news. We can't be sure of the cause of Petter's oil leak yet, but rock damage to the oil cooler appears to be the most likely explanation. We always knew there was going to be more work to do to the new car, and we expect it will take three or four rallies to get the best out of it, but we've clearly got the fundamentals right. We've shown today that we have the speed to lead rallies. Now we've got to convert that into results."
Subaru World Rally Team
