Atko: 2008 Prodrive Impreza a decade behind
- 1st June 2021, 8:00am
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by Peter Whitten
Former Subaru World Rally Team driver, Chris Atkinson, has revealed that his 2008 Impreza World Rally Car was up to 10 years behind the opposition.
Speaking exclusively to RallySport Magazine’s DustTrails podcast, Atkinson later drove World Rally Cars from Citroen, Mini and Ford.
“It showed me that, technology wise, we were probably a decade behind,” Atkinson said of the final Impreza S14 WRCar.
“With the differentials and the dampers we weren’t on the level with those (other) cars.
“They already were creating mechanical differentials that were acting like active differentials, and we just had basic mechanical differentials.
“The basic damper travel, the grip – we weren’t bad, but we weren’t leading the way that’s for sure.”
Asked how Subaru and Prodrive had fallen that far behind, he added.
“I don’t know how it got to that situation.
“I don’t think it was a lack of funding, as there were good engineers and it was just a matter of working as a team to create the best product, I guess.
“We had guys like FX (Demaison) who went on to develop the Volkswagen, who was Petter’s engineer there (at Subaru).
“There was definitely a lot of disagreement going around (in 2008), and there were definitely a lot of things said.
“The fact that he can go straight to Volkswagen as head engineer and create a championship winning car, shows that there were the people there with the ideas, it’s just whether all those ideas were flowing through to get the results.”
Atkinson and team-mate, Petter Solberg, were left without WRC seats after Subaru’s shock withdrawal from the championship at the end of the 2008 season.
