NEWS

Petter delighted with day two and three pace in Japan

Subaru World Rally Team driver Petter Solberg ended Rally Japan in an extremely positive frame of mind after recording a string of top three times - including three stage wins - on the event’s final day.
Following his Saturday retirement from fourth place with suspension damage, the Norwegian returned on Sunday as a SuperRally entrant and continued to show the same sort of pace which had earlier netted him the fastest time on SS12.
Solberg finished the rally eighth but remained upbeat about the progress made with the Impreza WRC2008.
“I must say that we and Subaru have done a very good job and I’m very happy with my performance on Saturday and Sunday,” he said. “We have improved the speed quite a lot and we have many stage wins and that’s very important. There really are a lot of good things to come from this rally and we need to continue to work with the car from exactly where it is now.”
Solberg thought that without Sunday’s difficult conditions he could have been fastest more often. “We had a few problems like a puncture and the screen fully blocked with fog on the long stage in the morning,” he said. “So I think we could have won a few more stages actually. If I’m fourth, or fifth, or sixth, for me, honestly it doesn’t matter. The main thing here is that we get the car faster and get back to the top and to fight for a win again. That’s absolutely the main thing.”
After a solid performance throughout the weekend Chris Atkinson brought his Impreza to the finish podium in fourth. “The conditions were very tricky on Sunday so we just focused on maintaining our place,” said Atkinson. “The top three drivers had no problems, so that’s the best we could do. It’s been a tricky weekend for everyone, with a lot of rain and a lot of standing water. Even at the pace we were going it was difficult to keep the car on the road.”
Subaru World Rally Team Principal David Richards described Sunday’s stage conditions as ‘some of the most difficult we’ve seen on a WRC event for many years’ but was happy with what his team had achieved: “We have won four stages this weekend on home soil, and clearly demonstrated a good step forward in performance. This will stand us in good stead as we head for the final round of the championship in GB at the start of December.”