Ford boss, Malcolm Wilson has hailed his number one driver, Marcus Gronholm as one of the quickest in the WRC.
Although his comments are hardly surprising in light of Gronholm's form thus far this season - the Finn has managed to win both events in Monte Carlo and Sweden, to make it two from two - these comments were actually said
before the season began at the Principality on January 20.
"At the end of the day Marcus is one of the quickest drivers in the championship," he told
Crash.net Radio prior to round one. "He is one of the 'old school' - a natural breed of drivers.
"Peugeot had a very strong engine and we are now using the same supplier, so he has been able to really liaise very closely with them so he gets the same characteristics out of the engine that he is looking for. And obviously the experience of 18 rally victories [now 20 wins] and two world championships, it is something we didn't have last season [with Toni Gardemeister and Roman Kresta]. So it is great to get back working with a guy who has got that sort of track record and that can actually push the car as well to those limits in testing, because at end of day that is what testing is all about, you have got to push the car without destroying it."
WRC supremo, David Richards also spoke to
Crash.net Radio prior to the season - and while he rightly predicted that Gronholm would be a real contender, he didn't envisage that
Petter Solberg would have such a dire start to the year.
"I think it is going to look very good [for Subaru in 2006]," added Richards, who is also the boss of Prodrive, who run the SWRT. "Petter Solberg is in a great frame of mind. He has been testing in Sweden. He is looking forward to the championship immensely this year. The car is looking very strong. It's a brand new car for this year. It has lot of interesting ideas on it and there has been lots of hard work from Pirelli on the tyre development over the last few months. I'd say it all bodes well.
"It's not going to be easy though.
Sebastien Loeb is going to be very difficult to beat. Marcus Gronholm in his new Ford is also going to be a big threat. I think for the world title it has to be between those three.
"But other than that you are going to see a lot of new faces - there are lot of young drivers out there,
Matthew Wilson from the UK and other new drivers you haven't seen so much before coming to the fore. I would say there will be quite a few surprises during the course of the year..."
Like for example... Solberg's failure to score in either of the opening two events!
