Subaru’s sporting director, Luis Moya is also optimistic that the work they did in Sardinia last week should aid their cause. He knows though that Cyprus is a demanding event: "To achieve a good result in Cyprus it’s crucial to have good reliability and consistency as the rally is incredibly demanding on the cars, possibly the most demanding of the entire championship so far," he continued. "Historically it’s claimed a number of retirements and, of course, the searing heat and dust can cause problems too. We hope we are well-prepared as a team; our drivers have trained especially for the temperatures and we’ve run a six-day test in Sardinia that should help us meet our performance targets in Cyprus as a team. We obviously hope to get a good result; both cars in the top six is a realistic prospect."
For
Chris Atkinson meanwhile this will only be his second outing in Cyprus and while he had a difficult start to the event last season, he set a string of top-ten fastest stage times on days two and three to recover to finish tenth overall.
"Last year we didn’t have such a good event as we had problems on the first day, but it was good to get experience of the stages on the final two legs. The rally is really hard work for drivers and co-drivers as the roads are very rough and the stages seem to last for ages as there are so many corners," he added. "To build up stamina for these longer runs, I step-up my fitness training to do longer runs and focus more on endurance training. I’d like to get a top five position this year."
Manufacturer 2.
OMV Peugeot Norway WRT:
[Manfred Stohl, car #7 and
Henning Solberg, car #8].
Manfred Stohl will return to the scene of his first-ever podium result this weekend, when he takes in the Cyprus Rally. Stohl pulled off something off a shock result when he took the runners-up spot last year on the Mediterranean event, second only to event winner,
Sebastien Loeb. Indeed the Austrian put a number of the 'works' drivers to shame and he will be eager to repeat that feat this Sunday.
