Posts Tagged ‘interview’

Video: Petter Solberg, Finnskogsvalsen 2010 [action + interview with English summary]

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

As most of you know, Petter Solberg tested his car in Finnskogsvalsen yesterday. Here are two video clips of it, one is an interview (in Swedish/Norweigan) at the start – and one is a clip from SS2. I’ve made a summary of the most important things said in the interview below the clips.

Driving on SS2:
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The interview:
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Quotes from Petter’s interview:

  • “This is most a way to test on many stages and get back to the feeling again”
  • “I have one goal this year, and that is to beat Sebastien Loeb. I’m a privateer now and that’s tough, many people probably regard it impossible, but I will try my best and I have a 2009 spec car that should be at least almost the same as the one Loeb will drive. I will do my workouts,eat good and try to get more testing than Sebastien. He will do 15 test days this year, so I have planned 26.”
  • Asked on the differences between Petter’s car and the 2010 Citroen works car, Petter says: “Sebastiens gearbox is 4 kg lighter than mine. I could get it, but it would cost me 8M NOK (ca €912.000) more, so I thought I’ll have to lose 4 kg’s myself instead.”
  • Talking on when Petter left Subaru, he says: “I had a good time with Subaru and we had many good years, but it came a time without that right philosophy, and then you’ll have to do something. They’ll probably come back some time – but when you don’t fight to win anymore you can’t do anything else [than leaving]. Now it’s Citroen and times have changed, but that’s life. It changes and you can just look forward.”
  • “The Citroen and the Ford is very similar cars, but I have a feeling the Citroen is better. Especially since this year’s WRC has many asphalt rallies, where the Citroen is clearly better.”
  • “I have one team in Torsby and one in France. The French team is currently preparing my other car for Mexico, and it will be loaded on the containers on Monday. At the same time, Pernilla is working on clothes and other things. Everyone in this team is working all around the day now, very hard.”
  • “This is the life of my family and also my wife Pernilla’s family. We all want to win and we’ll try to do it…”

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Posted in Rally testing, Swedish Rallying, WRC | 1 Comment »

Interview: PG looking forward to Rally Norway

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Despite a tight economy, PG Andersson will drive Rally Norway in the same Skoda Fabia WRC as he has used during two rallies in the Norweigan Championship recently.  The Fabia is owned by Norweigan driver Bernhard Kongsrud and has now passed a major overhaul since last time it was used. During Sunday and Monday, PG tested the car in Finnskogen, Norway:

- It worked out quite well. I want to change some small things, but overall it works fine. On Wednesday we will get new differentials delivered, so we will try to fit them on the car before shakedown to test them there. Besides that, it’s the same car as I used in the Norweigan Championship – the only difference is that it’s now completely gone-through and checked.

In 2008, PG was works driver for the Suzuki World Rally Team. However, after just one year of competition – Suzuki decided to close their WRC activity and blamed the financial crisis. Just looking at the chassi, the Skoda Fabia WRC is quite similar to the Suzuki, but we all know that means almost nothing. So, how similar are the two cars? PG answers:

- In size, they’re quite similar and they also have the same type of suspension, so it’s not a major difference – but all cars have their own character. The Skoda has a little bit more torque than the Suzuki, but it lacks a bit of top capacity. Besides that, the Suzuki was more aggressive and therefore harder to drive than the Skoda.

Surprisingly, PG’s regular co-driver Jonas Andersson can’t accompany him in Norway. He is a building worker and got a new employer in December that doesn’t seem to like rallying – despite the building company being Norweigan, Jonas can’t get off-duty. That means that Anders Fredriksson will join PG in the rally. He is not completely new to PG and the Skoda, since he has done quite some rallies with PG before – and also was the first one in the right seat when PG tested the WRC Skoda for the first time.

Yesterday I talked to Patrik Sandell, who said that the new wider Pirelli Sottozero tyres worked good in the tracks but made it really slippery in the snow. PG seems to agree to that, but he doesn’t share Patrik’s theory that the tyres would favour Scandinavians:

- The tyres work really well in the tracks, but as soon as you get out of the track it get’s slippery. Of course it has always been slippery out there, but now it’s even worse than before. Now it has been snowing quite a lot, but I can’t see that it would favour us Scandinavians. I think Loeb and the others can keep into the track too…

Talking about Sandell, some people have speculated on the Fabia Super2000 car being able to beat the Fabia WRC, probably much because of the good initial result of the Proton S2000 in Ireland. However, this seemed to depend much on the tyres in the difficult Ireland conditions – and PG doesn’t give much about the thought about the Fabia S2000 beating the WRC, if nothing happens of course:

- I’m nooot worried, says PG with a laugh.

As I mentioned previously, PG’s start has been surrounded by economical problems. However, those seems to be solved now, but the rest of the season looks dark:

- We’re obviously here and we’re gonna drive – but there wont be any money left after that, is PG’s short answer being questioned by me about the economical situation.

So, what can we expect in Rally Norway? During todays tests, PG drove on the same roads as Petter Solberg on Finnskogen. They did some comparisons and after winning two Norweigan Championship rallies PG seems to look resonably bright on his chances, despite not having a top car:

- Petter did his last run today 4 seconds faster than me with new tyres on a 9 km road, and I set my time using tyres that I had driven on for 100-110 km’s, so it seemed quite okay. The opposition now is of course totally different from the Norweigan Championship rounds I’ve driven, so if I can finish on fifth or sixth position I have to be really satisfied. You can’t really drive away from the Fords and Citroens, so you have to have some luck too. If I can battle somewhere around Mads Östberg I’ll have to be happy…

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Posted in Rally testing, WRC | No Comments »

Interview: Patrik Sandell about his first test of the Skoda Fabia Super2000

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

 

Patrik Sandell/Emil Axelsson, Skoda Fabia Super2000

During this weekend, Patrik Sandell tested the Fabia Super2000 in Kall, close to his home soil in Jämtland, Sweden. I called him afterwards to ask a few questions regarding the car, the team and the feelings in the test. I got a feeling that Patrik was satisfied and optimistic – but still a little bit cautious – regarding the upcoming Rally Norway. Not so strange, I guess – since the Fabia has never before been tested on real snow conditions. Anyway, Patrik’s first impression of that car seems to have been really good:

- Already when I first got into the car on Saturday lunch I got a really good feeling. Since then we’ve only made small adjustments and tried to find an optimal setup, and it have worked out really great without any incidents. Since the car has never been driven on full snow before, we started off from a gravel setup and worked from that. We ended up with a setup we were really satisfied with, and switched to another road to verify it really worked out well on different road types. Even Raimund [Baumschlager, team manager of Red Bull Skoda], who works as a test driver for Skoda, tested the setup and said it was really good. Noone should be able to judge it better, since Raimund was the first one driving the car a year ago and he has got more than 1000 SS km’s in the car since then.

The snow test this weekend was Patrik’s first time really testing the Skoda in high speed – but actually it wasn’t the first time he sat in the car. Few people know, but Patrik has seen the car and checked out the cockpit one time last autumn in France, while Hänninen and Kopecky (Skoda works drivers in IRC) were driving tests. However, now he has had the chance to drive the car for real, and since Patrik has driven both the Peugeot 207 S2000 and the Skoda Fabia WRC I could hardly stop wondering – how is the Fabia S2000 compared to them?

- The Skoda Fabia is really hard to compare to the Peugeot 207, they doesn’t at all remind of each other. The Skoda Fabia WRC comparison is much better, since they feel much more similar to each other. It feels like Skoda took the best parts out of the WRC and fitted them into the Super 2000 regulations. It will be interesting to see how the do against each other – but no matter what, I really believe in this car and the Red Bull team works really well.

Now, if Patrik wants the comparison – he’ll get it really soon. Another good Swedish driver will do Rally Norway in the Fabia WRC; P.G. Andersson. After seeing Niall McShea’s initial performance in the Proton S2000 car in Rally Ireland, I think it’s not totally unrealistic dreams that a S2000 car could beat WRC cars lower in the field. Question is just – is PG one of them?

As a conclusion, Rally Norway will mean many new things to Patrik, his car and his team. New car, new team, new surface (as I wrote, the Fabia S2000 has never been driven on snow previously) and not least new tyres. New for the season is the new, wider Pirelli Sottozero tyres used for snow:

- We ran on the new tyres in the test, and I think they are good – especially for us Scandinavians. The older ones were narrower and that meant quite good grip everywhere, including in the loose. Those new ones have really good grip in the track, but as soon as you get out of the track it’s really, really slippery. I think that will be an advantage to us that are used to driving on snow.

Tomorrow Patrik leaves for Norway to start the recce on Tuesday and Wendesday. The big concurrents are all Scandinavians youngsters – Flodin, Mikkelsen and Brynhildsen. However, Patrik has one other warning too:

- Martin Prokop performed really well on the last day of the Swedish Rally 2008, he may be a threat. Myself, I want to win in Norway if the team doesn’t have other plans for me. However, we must remember it’s our first time in the new car and the first time on snow for Skoda, but hopefully it will work out well. Then we should be battling in the top of our class…

Do you want to see photos or video of the test? Check out my post from yesterday.

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Posted in Rally testing, Swedish Rallying, WRC | No Comments »