Subaru rally driver Chris Atkinson has survived the challenges of the opening leg of Rally Finland to finish the day in seventh place.
While the Australian was disappointed not to have the pace to finish higher, his focus across the final two days will be to maintain a points scoring result come Sunday, while looking to further develop the new Impreza WRC2008.
Despite trouble free runs, both Atkinson and teammate Petter Solberg struggled to find the pace in their new Impreza across the opening ten competitive kilometres to match that of their rivals.
Sebastien Loeb leads the way and is 14.4 seconds in front of Mikko Hirvonen and 53.1 seconds clear of the third placed Henning Solberg.
Next up is Gigi Galli, just 3.1 seconds further back, with Dani Sordo fifth, another 9.2 seconds in arrears.
Petter Solberg is sixth, one minute 37.8 seconds behind Loeb and 32.4 seconds behind Sordo, and just 3.3 seconds clear of Atkinson.
It is only the third event for the Impreza WRC2008 and Atkinson knows the team is working hard to give him and Solberg a weapon that will take them to victory in future events.
“I drove pretty well this morning, and for me there were no problems, but we are still a little off in pace,” Atkinson said.
“The balance of the car was ok, but the surface is so loose. I expected to lose a few seconds each stage, but we’re a little further off than that. We’re still learning and it takes time to build confidence, especially on these roads which are so fast.
“The new car is easier to drive, and we just need to do some more fine-tuning.
“The balance was OK, we had a small problem in the middle loop of stages that the team fixed by the afternoon, but the speed just isn’t there quite yet.”
“I’m pushing hard for sure, so it’s frustrating for us and the team to not quite be there yet. We’ll see what changes we can make, see what the feeling is and I’ll drive as fast as I can across the next two days.”
Subaru World Rally Team Principal David Richards says his team still has more work to do to unlock the potential of the new Impreza WRC2008.
“We came here following a strong test anticipating we would be fully competitive, and although we are currently in solid points-scoring positions, our pace is not what we expected,” said Richards.
“However we must continue to focus on maintaining a systematic approach to the development and fine-tuning of this new car as its full potential indicated by our simulations and testing is clearly not evidenced by the current performance.”
Day two of Rally Finland is the busiest of the event, consisting of ten stages, only two of which are run twice, and a total competitive distance of 168.25 kilometres.
The stages take competitors 60 kilometres south west of the Jyvaskyla service park through the town of Jamsa before turning north and finally east as the cars complete the loop and return at the end of the day.
There are a lot of new sections of stages, as well as four entirely new tests. Saturday also includes part of the famous Ouninpohja stage, but in reverse.
Results – end of Leg One, Rally Finland
1. LOEB, Citroën, 01:04:57.9,
2. H HIRVONEN, Ford, 01:05:12.3, +14.4
3. SOLBERG, Ford, 01:05:51.0, +53.1
4. GALLI, Ford, 01:05:54.1, +56.2
5. SORDO, Citroën, 01:06:03.3, +1:05.4
6. P SOLBERG, Subaru, 01:06:35.7, +1:37.8
7. ATKINSON, Subaru, 01:06:39.0, +141.1
8. ANDERSSON, Suzuki, 01:07:18.3, +2:20.4
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