WRC: The Sweedish Rally - Gronholm makes it two for two
Thread Starter
VIP Member
iTrader: (3)
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 17,466
From: The BLC
Car Info: Legacy GT
WRC: The Sweedish Rally - Gronholm makes it two for two
Full story from wrc.com
Marcus Gronholm led the 2006 Uddeholm Swedish Rally from the first stage to the podium and while the gap to second placed Sebastien Loeb yo-yo'd thought the course of the event, the Frenchman was unable to catch the Finn. Third place went to Daniel Carlsson after an epic battle with Gigi Galli, both in Mitsubishi Lancer WRC05s,with the pair never more than ten seconds apart.
Prior to the start of the event, Marcus Gronholm was cautious about his chances. "Running first car on the road on this event is not necessarily a good thing", he said. But it served his purpose well. Gronholm, Loeb and Hirvonen were fastest on both the two opening stages, but Loeb was in difficulty. When removing the lamp pod after the first stage, the crew forgot to attach the bonnet safety pins and suffered a smashed windscreen. "This could not have happened at a worst time, because much of the stage was run into the low morning sunlight," said Loeb. Added to the time loss on the stage was a ten second penalty for arriving late at the next time control. This penalty would affect Manfred Stohl, because marshals forced him to run one minute behind, and spectators were not ready for another car arriving sooner than usual.
Hirvonen had chosen tyres fitted with normal studs, more suitable for snow rather than the extra-sharp studs suitable for ice, but was running strongly in third place. He was ahead of DTM star Mattias Ekstrom, who wasn't very happy. "A difficult start, trying to get a good feeling," he said. Young Brit Matthew Wilson, on the other hand, was discovering the niceties of winter rallying. "When I did the Arctic, there were deep snow-banks, it was like driving through a tunnel all the time. Here in Sweden, it's more open. Also, in Finland the surfaces were icy: here in Sweden, they're often more gravely." His Stobart VK Ford team-mate, Kosti Katajamaki, stalled his engine and touched a rock which caused him to be cautious. "This car is a lot newer than the Focus I ran back in Finland," he said.
But the big story of the morning stages was a broken driveshaft for Petter Solberg in stage one, with last year's winner losing three minutes before he could reach service. "I hit nothing, it just snapped," he explained. Swede Daniel Carlsson's speed was dampened when the semi-automatic gearshift on his Mitsubishi failed and he had to drive with manual 'shift. Tuohino was finding his way in a Citroen Xsara but had a handbrake problem which affected the clutch pedal.
On the first stage of the second loop, a repeat of the opening pair of stages, front-running drivers had a bad time. Quickest overall was 12th runner Galli, in front of 16th runner Ekstrom! Gronholm explained that this was the result of being a repeat of stage one, with snow and dirt scattered all over the track by later running two-wheel drive cars. Gronholm, in fact was quite deceived, finding the grip from the studs he chose not what he expected and he slid off on the first corner, although not actually stopping.
Drivers were confused with their tyre choice generally, so when they came to the fast stage four, it was a battle to maintain the speed and look after the studs for as long as possible. Atkinson went off, losing three minutes and breaking the power steering. He said that mechanical diffs made driving in these circumstances much harder. Aigner also went off for a while, but there was more drama for Petter Solberg. He stalled at the start of stage three and found the car uncharacteristically understeering. Then, on stage four, the transmission started to mis-select gears with no reason. On the following road section, he had to stop completely to engage an emergency gear in order to reach service, arriving 13 minutes (2m10s penalty) late.
Restarting again was the focus of Hirvonen. Team director Malcolm Wilson: "The water temperature actually reached 140 degrees, but surprisingly there does not seem to be any damage, so we allowed the car to carry on today".
Leg 2
Overnight clouds had cleared away and a cloudless sky at dawn greeted the drivers at the beginning of the second day, which meant one thing - it was cold. Temperatures of -17ÚC were commonplace. Drivers reported the driving conditions were absolutely fabulous.
The race for third between the two Mitsubishis raged onwards. Carlsson got ahead of Galli on stage seven but fell back on stage eight. Ekstrom dropped back after sliding off the road on stage seven, not helped by a tyre choice error, while Sordo went off the road and lost six minutes. "We went off at a slow corner where there were no spectators. We had to wait for people to arrive."
Katajamaki had his windscreen frosted over on the inside. In the first two stages Gronholm took another seven seconds off Loeb. Loeb's co-driver Elena said; "I guess we had the wrong tyres, we had assumed there would be more snow." The battle for third place was equally never ending; after 11 stages, the gap was down to four seconds in favour of Carlsson.
Wilson spent over two minutes in a snow bank and in the afternoon, both OMV team-mates Stohl and Henning Solberg crashed. Stohl had to retire; Henning arrived at service with no windscreen and snow piled high inside the cockpit.
Katajamaki had power steering failure and a spin; Radstrom was going well for someone so out of practice, admitting the only problem in the car was "between the steering wheel and the seat." Aigner was stuck for a minute in a snow bank. This was the longest group of stages on the same set of tyres, Atkinson admitting to a catastrophic error of choice. Team-mate Petter had gearbox trouble, having to drive stage 11 stuck in fourth gear.
Once again the day finished with firstly the 40km stage, then a repeat of the short spectator stage in Hagfors. The battle for the lead was intense and Loeb was 2.3 seconds faster than Gronholm. The Finn admitted he had lost 5 seconds at the start when he stalled. "We were really three seconds quicker! The day before we had been 0.8 seconds slower."
Carlsson was beaten by team-mate Galli by 0.9 seconds on the long stage and ended the day only 0.3 seconds ahead, in third place.
Fifth placed Ekstrom started the final stage 10.9 seconds ahead of Tuohino but stalled twice and ended the day 0.1 seconds in front. Tuohino had been ahead but admitted to a bad tyre choice for the long stage. "We had no choice, we had already run out of the availability of the tyres which would have been best."
For seventh place Sohlberg there was no place to go. On the road section after the final stage, his car stopped with no oil pressure and he retired. Petter Solberg got going again but hit a snowbank on the long stage and suffocated the air filter with snow, and then damaged the suspension on the final stage of the day.
Leg 3
The battles continued throughout the field on the final day of the Swedish Rally. Stohl rejoined the event after his accident on leg 2 but Kristian Sohlberg had to remain on the sidelines after his engine failure. All 12 world championship drivers and all 14 drivers in the J-WRC category were among the 59 crews at the restart. The fight for fifth place ended when Ekstrom had an electrical problem on the way to the first stage of the day and then promptly went off the road: his Red Bull team-mate Aigner went off at the same place for a while!
Norwegian Focus driver Thomas Schie retired with hydraulic failure. Henning Solberg dropped from seventh to tenth because he had to stop and change a wheel on the stage when the rim broke up without warning ("at over 165kph!"). On the third stage of the day, Gronholm had a hydraulic fluid leak problem and lost nine seconds to Loeb, the Finn's lead shrinking to 14.4 seconds.
The furious race between the Mitsubishis for third place continued non-stop. On every stage of the day until the final stage, third place changed hands. Galli edged ahead on stage 15 but Carlsson was back again on 16.
For a whole 24 hour period, the greatest gap between them had been only 2.4 seconds! Petter Solberg's bad rally continued: he hit a snowbank and snow was stuck on the windscreen. Solberg's misfortunes continued. At the start of the penultimate stage he could not start the engine, indeed it took ten minutes before he eventually reached the finish. The stewards took careful note and put him out of his misery. By excluding him for breaking the "start in 20 seconds" rule, they spared him the agony of driving back to the finish of the event.
The Mitsubishi battle continued to the end. Carlsson pulling out everything to beat Galli by nearly seven seconds to secure the final place on the podium, but Tuohino suffered engine problems at the end of the final stage and stopped. This meant that veteran driver Radstrom finished a surprised fifth place in the RED Subaru, while Katajamaki was the third best manufacturer team finisher, in the old Stobart VK Focus. For privateer Carlsson this was hopefully the conclusion to a long period of worry. "I spent the evenings during the recce ringing round people asking them to sponsor me. Hopefully now I have the podium finish, the money will start to arrive!"
Both Tuohino and Zachrisson successfully managed to get their cars clocked in to the final parc ferme. While for Tuohino this secured him 10th place but no points, for Zachrisson was classified 7th in JWRC and gained two points.
Final positions
1. M Grönholm/T Rautiainen Ford Focus RS 3hr 09min 01.9sec
2. S Loeb/D Elena Citroen Xsara 3hr 09min 32.8sec
3. D Carlsson/B Holmstrand Mitsubishi Lancer 3hr 11min 58.7sec
4. G Galli/G Bernacchini Mitsubishi Lancer 3hr 12min 05.7sec
5. T Rådström/J Skallman Subaru Impreza 3hr 14min 55.2sec
6. K Katajamäki/T Alane Ford Focus RS 3hr 16min 36.7sec
7. X Pons/C Del Barrio Citroen Xsara 3hr 17min 37.5sec
8. H Solberg/C Menkerud Peugeot 307 3hr 18min 03.4sec
9. J Joge/M Andersson Peugeot 206 3hr 18min 19.1sec
10. J Tuohino/R Pietilainen Citroen Xsara 3hr 18min 44.9sec
---End Story---
For those interested, it was a miserable weekend for Subaru and especially for Petter Solberg. Petter broke his driveshaft on stage 1, had numerous other mechanical glitches and ended up being excluded on the penultimate stage of the rally, for failing to start within the required time frame. Atkinson finished 11th overall after getting his fair share of mechanical gremlins as well. Time to look towards Mexico.
Marcus Gronholm led the 2006 Uddeholm Swedish Rally from the first stage to the podium and while the gap to second placed Sebastien Loeb yo-yo'd thought the course of the event, the Frenchman was unable to catch the Finn. Third place went to Daniel Carlsson after an epic battle with Gigi Galli, both in Mitsubishi Lancer WRC05s,with the pair never more than ten seconds apart.
Prior to the start of the event, Marcus Gronholm was cautious about his chances. "Running first car on the road on this event is not necessarily a good thing", he said. But it served his purpose well. Gronholm, Loeb and Hirvonen were fastest on both the two opening stages, but Loeb was in difficulty. When removing the lamp pod after the first stage, the crew forgot to attach the bonnet safety pins and suffered a smashed windscreen. "This could not have happened at a worst time, because much of the stage was run into the low morning sunlight," said Loeb. Added to the time loss on the stage was a ten second penalty for arriving late at the next time control. This penalty would affect Manfred Stohl, because marshals forced him to run one minute behind, and spectators were not ready for another car arriving sooner than usual.
Hirvonen had chosen tyres fitted with normal studs, more suitable for snow rather than the extra-sharp studs suitable for ice, but was running strongly in third place. He was ahead of DTM star Mattias Ekstrom, who wasn't very happy. "A difficult start, trying to get a good feeling," he said. Young Brit Matthew Wilson, on the other hand, was discovering the niceties of winter rallying. "When I did the Arctic, there were deep snow-banks, it was like driving through a tunnel all the time. Here in Sweden, it's more open. Also, in Finland the surfaces were icy: here in Sweden, they're often more gravely." His Stobart VK Ford team-mate, Kosti Katajamaki, stalled his engine and touched a rock which caused him to be cautious. "This car is a lot newer than the Focus I ran back in Finland," he said.
But the big story of the morning stages was a broken driveshaft for Petter Solberg in stage one, with last year's winner losing three minutes before he could reach service. "I hit nothing, it just snapped," he explained. Swede Daniel Carlsson's speed was dampened when the semi-automatic gearshift on his Mitsubishi failed and he had to drive with manual 'shift. Tuohino was finding his way in a Citroen Xsara but had a handbrake problem which affected the clutch pedal.
On the first stage of the second loop, a repeat of the opening pair of stages, front-running drivers had a bad time. Quickest overall was 12th runner Galli, in front of 16th runner Ekstrom! Gronholm explained that this was the result of being a repeat of stage one, with snow and dirt scattered all over the track by later running two-wheel drive cars. Gronholm, in fact was quite deceived, finding the grip from the studs he chose not what he expected and he slid off on the first corner, although not actually stopping.
Drivers were confused with their tyre choice generally, so when they came to the fast stage four, it was a battle to maintain the speed and look after the studs for as long as possible. Atkinson went off, losing three minutes and breaking the power steering. He said that mechanical diffs made driving in these circumstances much harder. Aigner also went off for a while, but there was more drama for Petter Solberg. He stalled at the start of stage three and found the car uncharacteristically understeering. Then, on stage four, the transmission started to mis-select gears with no reason. On the following road section, he had to stop completely to engage an emergency gear in order to reach service, arriving 13 minutes (2m10s penalty) late.
Restarting again was the focus of Hirvonen. Team director Malcolm Wilson: "The water temperature actually reached 140 degrees, but surprisingly there does not seem to be any damage, so we allowed the car to carry on today".
Leg 2
Overnight clouds had cleared away and a cloudless sky at dawn greeted the drivers at the beginning of the second day, which meant one thing - it was cold. Temperatures of -17ÚC were commonplace. Drivers reported the driving conditions were absolutely fabulous.
The race for third between the two Mitsubishis raged onwards. Carlsson got ahead of Galli on stage seven but fell back on stage eight. Ekstrom dropped back after sliding off the road on stage seven, not helped by a tyre choice error, while Sordo went off the road and lost six minutes. "We went off at a slow corner where there were no spectators. We had to wait for people to arrive."
Katajamaki had his windscreen frosted over on the inside. In the first two stages Gronholm took another seven seconds off Loeb. Loeb's co-driver Elena said; "I guess we had the wrong tyres, we had assumed there would be more snow." The battle for third place was equally never ending; after 11 stages, the gap was down to four seconds in favour of Carlsson.
Wilson spent over two minutes in a snow bank and in the afternoon, both OMV team-mates Stohl and Henning Solberg crashed. Stohl had to retire; Henning arrived at service with no windscreen and snow piled high inside the cockpit.
Katajamaki had power steering failure and a spin; Radstrom was going well for someone so out of practice, admitting the only problem in the car was "between the steering wheel and the seat." Aigner was stuck for a minute in a snow bank. This was the longest group of stages on the same set of tyres, Atkinson admitting to a catastrophic error of choice. Team-mate Petter had gearbox trouble, having to drive stage 11 stuck in fourth gear.
Once again the day finished with firstly the 40km stage, then a repeat of the short spectator stage in Hagfors. The battle for the lead was intense and Loeb was 2.3 seconds faster than Gronholm. The Finn admitted he had lost 5 seconds at the start when he stalled. "We were really three seconds quicker! The day before we had been 0.8 seconds slower."
Carlsson was beaten by team-mate Galli by 0.9 seconds on the long stage and ended the day only 0.3 seconds ahead, in third place.
Fifth placed Ekstrom started the final stage 10.9 seconds ahead of Tuohino but stalled twice and ended the day 0.1 seconds in front. Tuohino had been ahead but admitted to a bad tyre choice for the long stage. "We had no choice, we had already run out of the availability of the tyres which would have been best."
For seventh place Sohlberg there was no place to go. On the road section after the final stage, his car stopped with no oil pressure and he retired. Petter Solberg got going again but hit a snowbank on the long stage and suffocated the air filter with snow, and then damaged the suspension on the final stage of the day.
Leg 3
The battles continued throughout the field on the final day of the Swedish Rally. Stohl rejoined the event after his accident on leg 2 but Kristian Sohlberg had to remain on the sidelines after his engine failure. All 12 world championship drivers and all 14 drivers in the J-WRC category were among the 59 crews at the restart. The fight for fifth place ended when Ekstrom had an electrical problem on the way to the first stage of the day and then promptly went off the road: his Red Bull team-mate Aigner went off at the same place for a while!
Norwegian Focus driver Thomas Schie retired with hydraulic failure. Henning Solberg dropped from seventh to tenth because he had to stop and change a wheel on the stage when the rim broke up without warning ("at over 165kph!"). On the third stage of the day, Gronholm had a hydraulic fluid leak problem and lost nine seconds to Loeb, the Finn's lead shrinking to 14.4 seconds.
The furious race between the Mitsubishis for third place continued non-stop. On every stage of the day until the final stage, third place changed hands. Galli edged ahead on stage 15 but Carlsson was back again on 16.
For a whole 24 hour period, the greatest gap between them had been only 2.4 seconds! Petter Solberg's bad rally continued: he hit a snowbank and snow was stuck on the windscreen. Solberg's misfortunes continued. At the start of the penultimate stage he could not start the engine, indeed it took ten minutes before he eventually reached the finish. The stewards took careful note and put him out of his misery. By excluding him for breaking the "start in 20 seconds" rule, they spared him the agony of driving back to the finish of the event.
The Mitsubishi battle continued to the end. Carlsson pulling out everything to beat Galli by nearly seven seconds to secure the final place on the podium, but Tuohino suffered engine problems at the end of the final stage and stopped. This meant that veteran driver Radstrom finished a surprised fifth place in the RED Subaru, while Katajamaki was the third best manufacturer team finisher, in the old Stobart VK Focus. For privateer Carlsson this was hopefully the conclusion to a long period of worry. "I spent the evenings during the recce ringing round people asking them to sponsor me. Hopefully now I have the podium finish, the money will start to arrive!"
Both Tuohino and Zachrisson successfully managed to get their cars clocked in to the final parc ferme. While for Tuohino this secured him 10th place but no points, for Zachrisson was classified 7th in JWRC and gained two points.
Final positions
1. M Grönholm/T Rautiainen Ford Focus RS 3hr 09min 01.9sec
2. S Loeb/D Elena Citroen Xsara 3hr 09min 32.8sec
3. D Carlsson/B Holmstrand Mitsubishi Lancer 3hr 11min 58.7sec
4. G Galli/G Bernacchini Mitsubishi Lancer 3hr 12min 05.7sec
5. T Rådström/J Skallman Subaru Impreza 3hr 14min 55.2sec
6. K Katajamäki/T Alane Ford Focus RS 3hr 16min 36.7sec
7. X Pons/C Del Barrio Citroen Xsara 3hr 17min 37.5sec
8. H Solberg/C Menkerud Peugeot 307 3hr 18min 03.4sec
9. J Joge/M Andersson Peugeot 206 3hr 18min 19.1sec
10. J Tuohino/R Pietilainen Citroen Xsara 3hr 18min 44.9sec
---End Story---
For those interested, it was a miserable weekend for Subaru and especially for Petter Solberg. Petter broke his driveshaft on stage 1, had numerous other mechanical glitches and ended up being excluded on the penultimate stage of the rally, for failing to start within the required time frame. Atkinson finished 11th overall after getting his fair share of mechanical gremlins as well. Time to look towards Mexico.
now to get the 3 days burned.. Cant wait till it shows up online 
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
Nick Koan
Latest i-Club Reviews, Features, and Articles
0
Oct 31, 2005 10:03 AM
Nick Koan
Latest i-Club Reviews, Features, and Articles
2
Aug 11, 2005 05:52 PM
Nick Koan
Latest i-Club Reviews, Features, and Articles
1
Aug 8, 2004 10:01 PM