Portugal : Subaru World Rally Team - Preview IAfter Rally Mexico finished on Sunday 11 March, Petter Solberg embarked on a two-day promotional visit during which he travelled to Mexico City and Puebla.
After a brief rest in Monaco, he flew to the UK to attend the
handover of the Subaru Impreza RB320, the limited-edition road car produced in memory of former World Rally Champion Richard Burns.
Chris Atkinson exchanged the heat of Mexico for the snow of the French Alps, where he went snowboarding with some Australian friends, before returning to Monaco for some fitness training and preparation for Portugal.
The Subaru World Rally Team heads back to Europe for round five of the World Rally Championship, Rally de Portugal, which is back on the calendar after a break of six years.
The rally, which starts Thursday, will be the team's second event with the latest Subaru Impreza WRC2007 rally car. The car made a strong debut in Mexico earlier this month: Petter Solberg/Phil Mills led convincingly on the opening day, while Chris Atkinson/Glenn Macneall finished a solid fifth. With the WRC2007 having shown great potential on gravel special stages, the team heads to the loose-surface roads of southern Portugal with the aim of achieving strong points finishes for both drivers.
Rally de Portugal was first included on the WRC calendar in 1973, but took a break after the 2001 running of the event. Non-championship trials in 2005 and 2006 were observed by the sport's governing body, the FIA, and the rally was promoted back to the schedule for this year. The ‘old' WRC event used to be based in the north of the country, but now it is in the south, and the special stages will be unfamiliar to both Subaru World Rally Team crews until they drive them for the first time during their route reconnaissance next Tuesday and Wednesday.
The service area is at the Algarve Stadium, a spectacular sports venue not far from the city of Faro, on the south coast. For the competitive sections of the event, the crews will travel into the hills of the Algarve, a popular destination for tourists and golf enthusiasts, and also head north across the border into a province known as Baixo Alentejo, famed for vast, undulating plains which are home to much of the country's agriculture industry.
In general, the roads which make up the special stages for this event have a smooth topping of gravel but a very compact, hard base. This means that if it rains, the roads could become very slippery. There are some narrow mountain tracks included in the route, but fast sections are predominant and the average speed is likely to be very high, particularly on the first day of the event. As well as the 16 gravel stages, the rally starts and finishes with a fan-friendly Superspecial inside the Algarve Stadium. More than 20,000 spectators are expected at the events, which will run to a head-to-head format.
The rally opens with the Algarve Stadium Superspecial at 1800hrs on Thursday 29 March, and the competitive action ends in the same location on Sunday 1 April, with the final stage due to start at 1345hrs. In total, the rally route covers 1008.70km, which includes 357.10km of special stages and 651.60km of road sections.
Subaru World Rally Team
