Subaru rookie Mikko Hirvonen’s learning period is over, and it’s time for him to start focusing on his overall speed, according to team principal David Lapworth.

Hirvonen has been allowed to ease his way into the team in the opening seven rallies of the season, but Lapworth has admitted that as the Finn moves onto events of which he has more experience, the pressure to get strong results will be applied more intensely.

“For Mikko, this is an event that he has done before, and has experience of,” said Lapworth. “From now onwards we’ll be starting to look less and less at mileage and experience, and more at different aspects of his skill and speed.”

Hirvonen has made a considerable step forward in speed over the last three events in Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, but has admitted that his real speed will be shown on faster gravel events such as this weekend’s Rally Argentina and next months’ Neste Rally Finland.

“The stages in Argentina tend to be much faster than those on the last few rallies and, although I feel that my performance on the slower sections has improved, I still feel most at home on the fast stuff,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to the start of this rally.”


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David Lapworth, Subaru World Rally Team Principal
We are very pleased with Mikko's performance. Perhaps the most important thing is that he has been doing very good times - including his first stage win on gravel - while driving well within his limits. We obviously still have a sense of disappointment about Petter's retirement, but take consolation from another demonstration of the speed of the car, knowing the problems are unlikely to re-occur. A year ago our strength was our performance in rough and twisty events. With the 2004WRC Subaru Impreza we now relish the faster events too and both Petter and Mikko will be going for it in Finland.