Subaru sporting director, Luis Moya meanwhile has said that Solberg's pre-event crash in Germany last weekend will in no way compromise him. Although Solberg will have to use the same car that was re-built following his off in the shakedown for the German event last week, Moya added that this will not be detrimental to the performance of the Norwegian's Impreza WRC.
"We knew Germany would be a difficult rally, but if we compare our performance with Spain or Corsica we've made some real progress with the car. In Finland we hope we will see as great an improvement on gravel as we have on asphalt and we'll be fighting 100 per cent for a win for Petter. The technicians did a great job to repair his car on Thursday and again after his retirement on Saturday. Mechanically the car is perfect - it won't make any difference to his performance in Finland at all," confirmed Moya.
Subaru will revert to their more usual two-car line-up this weekend, with
Chris Atkinson back in the second car and nominated to score manufacturers' points. Atkinson is looking forward to getting back into the 2006 spec Impreza and will be hoping to get to the finish after mechanical issues forced him out last year on SS19 - prior to that he had set some highly competitive stage times.
"This will be my third Rally Finland and it's an event I really enjoy," continued the Aussie, who first drove in Finland in 2004 in a privately entered Group N Impreza. "It's good fun to drive, it's so fast and the jumps are incredible. The testing we've done over the summer gave us some valuable information and everything suggests we've made a big step forward with the car. I'm now looking forward to putting it into action on gravel. I'd like to be as competitive as the top five guys; I don't think a podium finish is impossible."
Manufacturer 2.
OMV Peugeot Norway WRT:
[Manfred Stohl, car #7 and
Henning Solberg, car #8].
OMV Peugeot will be back to full-force this weekend and as it is one of their nominated events, will be eligible to score points in the manufacturers’ championship.
