Subaru number one driver,
Petter Solberg has refused to predict how he or the team will do this coming weekend in Japan, after two miserable outings in Germany and Finland.
Solberg will make his third Rally Japan appearance this year and while he won the inaugural WRC event in 2004, last year was not so good, when his rally came to a premature end, when, with a 22 second lead, he hit a rock on the penultimate stage of the rally and retired.
Speaking prior to the event though, 'Hollywood' added that he definitely likes it: "I enjoy Rally Japan a lot, it's always been a good rally for us, but this year I don't want to make any predictions. Let's start, get into a rhythm and go from there – we need a good finish.
"Ideally it would be on the podium – if we're lucky and everything on the car works okay, we should be more than capable of doing this. It would be a great result for all of the fans there; it's definitely a boost for a driver to have that kind of incredible support."
Solberg has been busy testing in between the Rally Finland and Rally Japan and he and team-mate,
Chris Atkinson went directly from Finland to Sardinia for a four-day development test. Solberg drove for two days while Atkinson followed the test as an observer.
"Despite a gap of only 96 hours between the end of Rally Finland and the dispatch of parts and cars by airfreight to Japan, the team ran a four-day test in Sardinia targeted at both long-term development and finding further performance improvements," added Subaru World Rally Team managing director, Richard Taylor. "We hope these findings can be applied to all the cars before they attack the first Japanese stage on Friday."
