Portugal : Subaru World Rally Team - Preview IIThe Subaru World Rally Team has entered two examples of the new Impreza WRC2007 for Rally de Portugal.
As usual, Petter Solberg/Phil Mills will drive car number seven, while Chris Atkinson/Glenn Macneall will be in
car number eight. Petter and Phil contested Rally de Portugal in 2001, when it was last a WRC round, but back then the event was based in Santa Maria de Feira, in the north of the country.
The Subaru World Rally Team has a history of success on the event and has won three times, with Carlos Sainz triumphing in 1995, Colin McRae in 1998 and Richard Burns in 2000.
Petter Solberg
“After the performance of the team in Mexico I'm really looking forward to Portugal. The rally is new for everybody and I'm interested to see how competitive we are. The development of the new Impreza has continued since Mexico, so we will see if we can be even faster than we were there. It's true that we don't know the stages, no-one does, but we will do everything we can to prepare and I'm confident that it will be a very positive event for us.”
Chris Atkinson
“It will be interesting to apply what we learnt in Mexico to this event. Together with the engineers we've put a strong package together and we're confident our new approach will work well in Portugal. It will take a little bit more testing to get the car onto top form, but we have some good ideas following the work we did in Mexico.
It is still early days for the new car and everything so far has been quite encouraging. On the gravel roads of Portugal we might benefit from an advantageous road position, although that might work against us if it rains. When we're faced with a totally new rally there is nothing we can do to prepare apart from try to write the best pace notes we can during the recce. It's an unknown for everyone.”
Paul Howarth, SWRT Operations Director
“Although the rally has never been based in this area, we know roughly what to expect. Leg one is very fast and flowing, with some wide roads that have a hard-packed base. Leg two is going to be very demanding; there are a lot of narrow sections that could cut up quite badly. The first stage of leg two (Silves/Ourique) is 30km in length and will be a very important stage. It starts off very fast for 12km, but then gets twisty, rough and hilly. It will be very tough and I think the second leg, and that stage in particular, will be crucial to the outcome of the rally. There are more than 20 World Rally Cars on this event. If it is dry, a lot of road-cleaning will occur on day one, and the number of WR Cars also means that competition for points will be fierce throughout the order.”
Richard Taylor, SWRT MD
“The entire team was very pleased with the performance of the new car on its first event in Mexico. Since that rally we have been working on some small details to further improve the car for Portugal. Our target for this rally is to get both Petter and Chris in the top five and, if all goes well, to challenge for a place on the podium. We're looking forward to this new event. The fact that the stages are unfamiliar for everyone will certainly level the playing field. Similarly, none of our rivals have any prior experience of competing with BFGoodrich tyres on the Portuguese stages, so tyre choice could have an influence on the result of the rally. This will almost certainly be the case if we get changeable weather, as some forecasts suggest we might at some point during the week.”
Subaru World Rally Team
