Sweden 2006: Stobart M-Sport Ford - Finish
The World Rally Championship`s youngest official driver Matthew Wilson brought his Ford Focus RS WRC 05 back to Karlstad to an untroubled 13th position in Sweden this evening. The 19-year-old admitted the second round of the series had been every bit as tough as the Monte Carlo Rally, where he made his debut for the Stobart VK M-Sport team a fortnight ago.
This is Matthew`s first attempt at the highly-specialised Swedish Rally, but the perfect conditions made his job slightly less complicated on today`s third and final leg. Temperatures in the central Sweden area, where the rally is running, remained firmly below zero, but the roads had been covered with a dusting of overnight snow. Snow flurries continued throughout the day.

Matthew ran through the final day without any problems, moving up to 15th position on SS15, despite feeling he hadn`t driven as well as he might have done in the Rammen test. The afternoon passed without incident, with Matthew climbing a further two places up the leaderboard to end the event in 13th position – two places higher than he ended Monte Carlo a fortnight ago.

Kosti Katajamaki enjoyed a trouble-free final six stages in the sister Focus. He moved past Henning Solberg`s Peugeot on the first run through Rammen and into sixth on the last stage of the event, following the demise of Janne Tuohino`s Peugeot. The 28-year-old, on his first ever World Rally Championship event in a World Rally Car, took comfortably his best result to date. The combined efforts of Matthew and Kosti has also netted the Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team its first points of this World Rally Championship campaign. In addition to Kosti`s three points in the drivers` championship, the team grabbed seven in the race to be the top manufacturer of 2006.

Matthew Wilson
“I stalled at the start of the first stage this morning. I dropped 15 seconds before I could get going again. I had to power cycle the car, which means if the car doesn`t fire up straight away, you have to turn off the electrical master switch and basically reboot the system. It`s kind of the same thing you would do with a computer at home. Once the car was running again, that stage was good. I felt confident with the car and then everything was flowing. On the middle one of the loop this morning, I don`t know what happened. That Rammen stage is a bit of a classic. It`s really fast and flowing at the start, then twisty in the middle and then fast to the finish. It`s the kind of stage you need to feel comfortable on very quickly. There are lots of long corners over crests, where you need full commitment to the notes and I didn`t get that. The third stage was good again, no problems at all in there. This afternoon has gone to plan nicely for us. We didn`t want to take any risks or anything like that. The roads had a few ruts on them on the second run through, so it would have been easy to go off. I was a little happier in the Ramman stage on the second run through, I was faster, but I`ve still got a bit to learn about that particular stage. On the whole though, I`m happy with what I`ve achieved here – and better still we have scored some manufacturer points.”

Kosti Katajamaki
“I have been determined to push harder today, I wanted to show that I could set good time in the Focus. The car has run without any problems and the roads have been fantastic. Okay, there`s been a little bit of fresh snow on the surface and running higher up the order meant we had to deal with a little bit more of that, but otherwise it`s great. I pushed this morning and we were in the top ten times, but then this afternoon you start to see the finish is coming and I really wanted to get there.”

Malcolm Wilson, Team Principal
“Once again, Matthew has done a very sensible job. Okay, he landed on a snow bank yesterday, but that`s part and parcel of this rally. He has driven very well and learned a huge amount about this event – just like he did two weeks ago in Monte Carlo. We keep saying it, but this season is all about Matthew building a bank of knowledge for rallies just like this one. Sweden remains one of the most specialised rallies in the championship. For Matthew it really was a case of all the prizes being at the finish – and he made it there. Kosti also did a great job. He has a lot of experience of World Rally Cars now, he won the Arctic Rally before competing here, but to take sixth on your first WRC round in one of these cars is impressive. What`s also very good for Kosti is that he did it without putting a mark on the car – and that`s no mean task on this kind of winter event.”

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