“But we mustn’t lose our calm over this. We’re here to score points. In my first Citroen-season in 2005 I had accumulated 22 points at the year’s end. This year it’s only nine so far which means that 13 are still missing - and I have three rallies left to score them.”
Subaru WRT:
[
Petter Solberg, car #7 and
Chris Atkinson, car #8 [and Xavier Pons, car #17 - not nominated for manufacturers’ points]]
Home event to boost Subaru?
Subaru team boss, Richard Taylor has promised that they will be pulling out all the stops on the Rally Japan in order to do as well as possible on their ‘home’ event.
Subaru finished with all three of their cars in the points on the Rallye de France-Tour de Corse recently, however, once again they were unable to challenge for a podium place. Indeed thus far this season they have only managed to get onto the podium twice.
Taylor is reasonably optimistic though that they will be able to deliver in the Far East: “The last two gravel events have given us fourth places with Chris and we know we’ve made a number of significant improvements to the car since New Zealand.
“The additional test the team did for Japan went very well and our target and expectation is for Petter and Chris to be on podium pace throughout. It will be Xevi’s first time in Japan but his target is another points-scoring finish nevertheless.
“This is
Subaru's home event and a strong result here is important for everyone in the team so we will all be pushing even harder than normal,” he confirmed.
Subaru’s operations director, Paul Howarth meanwhile is also pretty optimistic: “Subaru is the only Japanese manufacturer competing in every round of the 2007 WRC season, and being their home rally and a Subaru spectator-dominated event, everyone wants to see us do well,” he continued.
“Chris and Petter have both gone well here in the past. For Xevi this will be his first time so he will need to use it as a learning experience.
