The Munchi’s Ford World Rally Team enjoyed their best outing to date earlier this month on the ‘Rally of a 1000 Lakes’, when Companc brought his Focus WRC car home in eleventh and Villagra finished 14th.
That increased the teams tally from 1 point to 6 and now the aim is to get more: “The team are all on a high now after the result in Finland where both myself and Federico scored points for the Munchi’s team,” said Luis.
“We both learnt valuable information from Finland and I’m sure that this will help when we start in New Zealand. The car settings for both events are quite similar so we should get into a good rhythm from the start of the rally.
“I’m feeling good, confidence is high and our pacenotes are good from last year; hopefully we can grab some more points again.”
Companc finished seventh in NZ in 2006 - his best ever result in a WRC event outside his native country of Argentina. His most recent outings in Greece and Finland have also been pretty positive.
“Rally New Zealand is one of my favourite events and one that I am really looking forward to,” he continued.
“The car felt extremely good there last year and I generally enjoy that type of rally with fast, flowing roads.
“Last year was one of the first gravel events we used the 06 car on but we have much more experience of this car now and the testing on gravel in Spain has helped a lot with the feeling and suspension settings.”
Villagra meanwhile has been keeping his WRC preparations up-to-speed by competing in his national championship. He finished second in the recent Rally de General Roca, round six of the Argentine National Championship and now leads the championship by 19.5 points.
Like Luis he also has experience in NZ and in 2005 he finished seventh in the Production class.
“The confidence is good from Finland and the feeling that I have with the rally car is growing better all the time,” added ‘Coyote’.
