Subaru sporting director, Luis Moya has admitted that they have a lot of hard work to do, if they are to improve their competitiveness on asphalt.
Subaru have had a tough start to the 2006 season and while there seemed to be 'light at the end of the tunnel' in Mexico, when
Petter Solberg was battling for the win, that event was on gravel. Since the start of the Rally Catalunya on Friday, the Impreza's have failed to match the pace of the lead Ford's or the Kronos Racing ran Xsara's and they finished the second leg seventh, eighth and twelfth, way down the leaderboard and over 3.5 minutes off the battle for the lead.
"Clearly we are not happy with our performance," said Moya. "Yesterday we seemed to be able to be more competitive, however today both Petter and Stephane [Sarrazin - our two nominated drivers'] are suffering from a continuous lack of grip.
"We need to work very hard as a team together with Pirelli to improve our performance in these asphalt conditions. For tomorrow we will focus on finding a solution and improving on today's position and work towards a strong result in Corsica [the next event, which is also on asphalt]."
Solberg meanwhile was unsurprisingly not too happy either, although he is trying to remain as positive as possible, even if his title hopes do seem to be dwindling with the passing of each event.
"It's been a difficult day," added the Norwegian. "We are not at all close. There was so much loose gravel on the surface, more than we have seen before, and maybe that was a factor. It's encouraging that the car is working well, but still we need to look at every detail to see what we can do tomorrow."
