“The car performs smoothly and I’m really impressed by how fast you can steer it on tarmac. Currently Francois is still a bit faster but he is surely one of the fastest men on this surface in general,” noted Manfred. “I’m convinced that we will improve by far and be able to erase the small insecurities caused by the long break.”
Stohl finished fifth in Germany last year and would dearly like to repeat that this Sunday: “That was when we proved for the first time that we are not only fast on gravel - and the Citroen Xsara WRC definitely has the potential to cause some surprise,” added Manfred, who will compete in a special livery, as part of the OMV Move & Help car design competition for children.
For the record, this will be the only the fourth ‘proper’ time this season, OMV Kronos have fielded two cars, after Daniel Carlsson was forced to abandon his programme with the #6 car due to budget problems. It is not yet known if Duval will do any more events with OMV Kronos following the Rallye Deutschland.
Subaru WRT:
[
Petter Solberg, car #7 and
Chris Atkinson, car #8 4 [and Xavier Pons, car #20 - not nominated for points]]
Subaru not worried about Petter’s Finland problems.
Subaru’s managing director Richard Taylor has said that he is confident they will be able to put in a competitive performance in Germany this week, despite all problems that afflicted their number one driver, Petter Solberg in Finland.
Although the team has now established what was wrong with Petter’s car two weeks ago, they have yet to establish why the differential failed on day 1 in Finland and why the dampers were playing up on the Saturday.
Despite that though, Taylor is convinced that they can do better on the Rallye Deutschland. Indeed, like Ford and
Citroen, Subaru conducted a test in Germany pre-event and all three works Subaru drivers were apparently pleased with the work done on the Impreza.
