Solberg conquers Japan
5 Sep, 08:37
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Petter Solberg won the inaugural Rally Japan today after a fine drive during which he never put a Subaru wheel wrong. He led from start to finish, and built a big enough lead on the morning of the second leg to deter any major attacks thereafter. His victory elevates him to second in the Championship, 30 points behind Sebastien Loeb.

"After Germany it's incredible. I'm very pleased to win in Japan and Subaru's home country," said Solberg at the finish. "I must say it was better than I expected after crashing in Germany. I never thought I could be so good because it was a terrible accident."

Subaru Team Principal David Lapworth was delighted with the result. "It's been great. This was such an important rally to win we tried to apply our experience to work out which tyres we needed and what we needed for the car. Petter did a great job especially after the last two rallies. Many drivers find that difficult. The only other secret was to treat this rally like any other rally. We try and keep the drivers, mechanics and technicians away from pressure."

Citroen driver Loeb might have made a fight of it over the latter part of the second leg and the third had not the winner built such a solid lead on the opening day. That Solberg was able to do so was largely due to an inspired choice of Pirelli pattern and compound. Inspired, because it was made with little direct knowledge of the conditions to be faced, while Citroen and Michelin picked wrong. The time lost was sufficient to encourage Loeb to settle for second place points towards a Championship victory which now looks increasingly likely.

"Second is good, to win would be better but the objective is to win the Championship," said Loeb. "You cannot win every time and Petter was very fast here. The most important difference was the second day when we had the wrong tyre choice for the first loop. After than I didn't try again."

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Third place for Markko Martin was a just reward for a rally-long battle with his own pace-notes. From the very beginning he realised that his notes were vastly overoptimistic. Had he depended on them he probably wouldn't have finished the rally. As it was the crew consistently rewrote them for the second pass and drove most of the first passes by sight. The car has the pace to match or beat the rest of the field, as does Martin and it is to be hoped that Ford's management will persevere with the programme which brings lustre to the product's image.

"It’s quite OK considering how Friday went, having to adjust our notes and increase our speed," Martin summed up. "We gained from Marcus’s problem and the end was better than the beginning. I’m just frustrated that the notes were so bad the first two days. The result’s not too bad."

Peugeot meanwhile continues to suffer unreliability with the 307's transmission. The new five speed box was held back for a long time before it was considered to be reliable. Here it proved to be anything but, although both cars finished the rally and scored points. The team acknowledges that it has work to do with the five speed 'box which runs two clutches. With Rally GB just two weeks away there will be much to do to ensure that the problems, be they mechanical or electronic are sorted in time for that event. Marcus Gronholm pressed on through it all to finish fourth but never had the pace of the two leaders.

"I was trying to catch Carlos, so not so bad, but we still have things to do to win rallies," said Gronholm. "We were 20 seconds behind Solberg when the problem started. We could maybe have put a bit of pressure on him, maybe not. We are struggling."

Carlos Sainz was just 13 seconds behind him at the end and nearly five minutes ahead of Harri Rovanpera in the second 307. "I tried to beat Marcus, but he was driving well," said the Spaniard. "It was too risky. I was never confident during the whole weekend. I am quite glad it is over."

Mikko Hirvonen's efforts to get the second Impreza to service would appear to have been rewarded by seventh overall, assuming the Stewards reckon it was all legal, while Anthony Warmbold got the final point

Subaru also took the top three Group N placings, Toshi Arai winning the category, with Australia's Dean Herridge coming a strong third.

Karamjit Singh won the APRC event overall and took maximum SupeRally bonus points from each leg. Chris Atkinson had to settle for second having led the event yesterday in the rapid S1600 Suzuki. Throughout the second leg he had battled with Katsuhiko Taguchi for second place. But the Japanese driver's Mitsubishi cried enough on stage 26 so he has to make do with two SupeRally points from the first leg. This let New Zealander Geof Argyle in for the final SupeRally point on the second leg and third place overall. Vesa Mikkola was fourth on today's leg in the second Suzuki sixteen seconds ahead of Armin Kremer. The German eventually finished fourth overall in the second MRF backed Mitsubishi after an event in which he was unable to mount his usual challenge to Singh.

Malaysian Proton driver Singh now leads the APRC standings on 48 points, ten ahead of Kremer with Atkinson third on 27. The young Australian's performance here should have ensured that his name is in a number of managers' notebooks for future consideration. Atkinson was content to get the car round and finish today. "We're pretty happy to make it to the finish," he admitted. "I didn't expect to get so close to the leading Group N car but the conditions maybe favoured us."

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Full Story (http://www.worldrallynews.com/artman/publish/article_595.shtml)