Subaru
World Rally team managing director, Richard Taylor has said that he wants to see the team make 'significant improvements' during the remaindered of the season.
Speaking prior to the Cyprus Rally, the twelfth round in the 2006
FIA World Rally Championship, Taylor added that everyone at the Prodrive-run team have been 'working flat-out' to make sure the Impreza WRC is a more competitive package this weekend and in the remaining four events of the season - in Turkey, Australia, New Zealand and Britain - no doubt to ensure they can go into 2007 ready to fight for event wins and the championship titles.
"Cyprus marks the midway point of the second half of the season. In Germany, Finland and Japan we struggled to achieve a consistent level of car performance, but despite a gap of only two weeks between the finish of the last event and the start of Cyprus, the team has undertaken an extensive and extended test in Sardinia that will finish less than 36 hours before the start of the Cyprus recce," he explained.
"Our test objectives have been two-fold; first, to develop a chassis set-up that gives Petter [Solberg] and Chris [Atkinson] a more consistent car, and second, to finalise the most suitable specification for the unique conditions found on this event. Competition at the head of the field is always tough in the WRC, but over the last five events of 2006 we are looking for a significant improvement on our recent results. The drivers, engineers, technicians and our tyre partner Pirelli have been working flat out to make sure we soon add to Subaru's 47 WRC event wins."
For Atkinson meanwhile this will only be his second outing in Cyprus and while he had a difficult start to the event last season, he set a string of top-ten fastest stage times on days two and three to recover to finish tenth overall.
"Last year we didn't have such a good event as we had problems on the first day, but it was good to get experience of the stages on the final two legs. The rally is really hard work for drivers and co-drivers as the roads are very rough and the stages seem to last for ages as there are so many corners," he added. "To build up stamina for these longer runs, I step-up my fitness training to do longer runs and focus more on endurance training. I'd like to get a top five position this year."
