Norwegian Mats Ostberg was delighted to be back in an official works rally car on a WRC event that he had entered many times in the past.
“I was working for this for a long time, it is the best rally in the championship," Ostberg said.
"It's was a completely new rally in my opinion this year. I made all new pacenotes and the stages looked quite different.
"The guy who ploughs the road really decides how it looks, and he can do what he wants. For sure the road looked really, really different.”
The challenge was not just the route, for Mads it was also the challenge of the Citroen C3 WRC, in which he had less than a pre-rally day of testing.
Impressively, he was immediately fastest overall on the first run through Shakedown, where he ended up second best.
After the second stage of the rally, he was lying second overall.
Gradually he started to suffer from using set-up changes, which he had no chance to check before the rally, which slowed him down.
Team director, Pierre Budar, said: “It’s brilliant what he’s done with the car. He couldn’t get all the set-up he wanted, so it’s quite brilliant what he’s managed.”
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Impressively, he was immediately fastest overall on the first run through Shakedown, where he ended up second best.
After the second stage of the rally, he was lying second overall.
Gradually he started to suffer from using set-up changes, which he had no chance to check before the rally, which slowed him down.
