Subaru hold steady in Spain

3:05pm Sunday 5th October 2008

Banbury's Subaru World Rally Team entry of Petter Solberg and Phil Mills remained fifth overall after the second day of intense mid-field competition in Spain.

Team-mates Chris Atkinson/Stéphane Prévot pushed hard to climb one position on the morning’s opening test.

Brice Tirabassi also retained his overnight position, having just been edged out of a tight scrap of his own.

As forecast, Saturday started colder but, after Friday's decision, all three SWRT entries left for the first stage on Pirelli’s hard compound P-Zero tyre.

Despite a temperature of 11 degrees Celsius that lingered until midday before the sun’s rays were felt in the service park, the hard compound was clearly the right choice for the morning’s conditions.

“To the casual observer today appears to have been a fairly uneventful day, but that belies all the hard work that has gone on behind the scenes” said team principal David Richards. “We’ve certainly learnt a lot more about the car and we will continue to try some further ideas."

The longest stage of the rally awaited crews yesterday, setting the scene for what was a challenging day on mostly new roads that placed an even greater emphasis on pace-notes.

Whilst the opening El Priorat / La Ribera d’Ebre stage was by far the longest at 38.27km, the final test of both the morning and afternoon loops was the toughest of the rally.

The La Llena stage was new for this year’s competition, and the last ten kilometres of the 17.12km stage were undoubtedly the most punishing. Presenting a different surface than the other stages, the roads were covered in dirt and gravel dragged onto the road as crews cut corners, placing their inside wheels on to the dirt on the inside of each corner to shave vital tenths of a second. The roads were even dirtier and loose in the afternoon, and as the temperature rose, the asphalt tyres faced another tough challenge.

Solberg started the day in fifth position with a comfortable gap over Urmo Aava behind him in sixth. The gap stayed constant around the ten-second mark until the final stage, the repeat pass of the aforementioned La Llena. Made more loose and slippery after the first pass, Solberg and Mills battled a reduced grip level, which allowed Aava to close to a mere 1.4seconds to set up a battle that will rage to the finish.

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