Subaru's director of engineering, Steve Farrell has revealed that the Banbury based squad are feeling 'optimistic' ahead of the Rally Catalunya this weekend.
Speaking in the count-down to the first proper asphalt event of the season, Farrell added that since last year, they have been pulling out all the stops to adapt the Impreza WRC so that it runs well on tarmac and so they can compete with the
Citroen Xsara WRC, which has been the dominant car in recent years on seal-surface events.
"Spain will be the first of two paired asphalt events. The demands between gravel and asphalt are very different and the past few sealed surface events have not proven just reward for our efforts. Since Germany last year we've been working extremely hard on developing a much more specialised car," he confirmed.
"Most of the differences concern the brakes and the tyres, however we've also introduced a suspension package with completely new uprights and geometry. Clearly the regulation changes mean we're also having to evaluate the performance of mechanical differentials. We looked at the car's set-up in a four day asphalt test in Italy two weeks ago in addition to an intensive tyre testing programme. It was very productive - Pirelli has done a fantastic job and come up with some tyres that look very promising, so we're optimistic about the rally. We feel we've got a good all-round package."
Subaru sporting director, Luis Moya is also feeling confident and he has high hopes that his trio of drivers - Petter Solberg, Stephane Sarrazin and
Chris Atkinson will all go well.
"We need to count Rally Catalunya as the first asphalt event of the year as Monte Carlo is always a bit of an anomaly. The testing we've done with the car last week was very positive and the tyres suit the road surface extremely well," he added.
"Spain is the first real sealed surface rally of 2006 so we have no benchmark to measure ourselves against. We can't compare this year to last as we've made some changes and the car is very different - we'll just have to wait and see, but we're all very optimistic about the chances of a good result. We're back in Spain now after only five months so the route hasn't changed a great deal, but the weather may well be a factor as it is very unstable at the moment. It will be as difficult to predict the conditions as it will be to predict the outcome of the rally."
