Sweden Rally 2006: Stobart M-Sport Ford - Leg 2After another tricky day on the frozen stages in central Sweden, Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team drivers Matthew Wilson and Kosti Katajamaki are poised to score their first ever manufacturer points in the World Rally Championship.
Matthew learned another valuable lesson about the Swedish Rally today, namely the problems snow banks can cause. The 19-year-old started the day 16th overall, but dropped four places after spending more than two minutes on top of a bank on the tenth stage. He battled back, despite power steering trouble on the next test, and made three places up before the end of the leg. On the final two stages the Cumbrian wasn`t 100 per cent happy with his car`s handling, but admitted part of the problem could have been down to the rutted nature of the second run through Vargasen, the event`s longest stage.
Prior to today`s action, the mechanics on Matthew`s Ford had worked flat-out last night, rectifying a fuel injection problem which had caused the engine to lapse onto three cylinders for Friday`s final test. There was no recurrence of the fault through today`s seven stages, however.
Matthew`s team-mate Kosti Katajamaki moved into the top ten on SS11, following the departure of Manfred Stohl, who crashed his Peugeot. The power steering failed on Kosti`s Focus on the way to SS11. He then spun the car in that stage and dropped more time. Despite that, he remains in touch with the cars ahead and is hoping to move up the order on tomorrow`s final day of the event. Kosti ended leg two on a high note, posting second fastest time on the Hagfors Sprint stage, finishing just seven tenths of a second behind reigning world champion Sebastien Loeb.
Both the Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team Focus RS WRC 05s suffered power steering problems on the middle loop of stages, otherwise the cars ran without fault.
Matthew Wilson
“We were in the middle of the tenth stage when I had my problem. It wasn`t really an off as such. Basically we were in the ruts, like we had been – and you have to be – on all of the re-run stages. Maybe we had braked a tiny bit late, but the car jumped out of the ruts and understeered off the road. We actually landed on top of the bank, a bank where there weren`t many spectators. More people came and helped to lift the car off the bank and put it down on the road, it was amazing to see them lifting the car. I have to say a big thanks to those people, without them I don`t think we`d have been able to get back on the road. We dropped 2m30s in the process. We`d made a change to the centre differential, trying to get the car to oversteer less, but that wasn`t anything to do with us bellying out on the bank – I was actually much happier with the car.
“Similarly, I don`t think the power steering trouble was an after-effect of our problem. The power steering was working intermittently, which makes the whole thing even worse. When you turn in and commit to a corner, you`re always thinking in the back of your mind: “Is the steering going to tighten up and will I be able to get the car through the corner.” That middle loop of stages was really difficult, I`m really glad to get through those. The car didn`t feel quite right on the second run through the long one this afternoon, we`ll have a look at it in service.”
Kosti Katajamaki
“It`s always tough to drive a rally car without power steering, it`s so heavy on the arms. The spin was nothing to do with the power steering problem, though. We were going to fast for the corner, it was my fault. Then on the second run through the long stage – Vargasen – we started to have some studs coming out of the tyres. We were losing a bit of traction. I was a little bit disappointed with this stage, and to be honest with my overall position in the rally, but okay we are ready to try and set some good times tomorrow.”
Malcolm Wilson, Driver Principal
“Matthew clearly wasn`t happy with the car through the long stage. He was only four seconds down on Xevi Pons (Sebastien Loeb`s Citroen team-mate) on the split time after 10km, but then by the finish he`d dropped 48 seconds. I think it`s something in the handling. We changed the power steering pump and steering rack on Matthew`s car after the middle loop today. We weren`t sure what had caused the problem, so we decided just to get both changed. It was the pump on Kosti`s car which had failed, so we changed that at the same service.”
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