As unpredictable mountain weather made tyre selection difficult during Leg one, Petter Solberg struggled to find the winning pace that has earned him two victories so far this season. Ending the day in fourth position overall, and with 200 competitive kilometres remaining, he remains committed to achieving a podium finish.
Contesting his first ever WRC Turkey Rally, Chris Atkinson suffered an incident in SS3, which ended his Leg before he had a chance to get into his stride. He will re-start tomorrow intent on gaining more experience of the demanding Turkish roads.
Petter Solberg
"It`s been a very difficult day. I don`t think I`ve had the correct tyre choice at all and it`s hard to smile when you`re fourth! In the afternoon we tried a new tyre evolution, but it was designed to work at 30°C, and it was just 16°C on the stage, so it didn`t work at all and I had to do the best I could. We hoped that the rain would miss the stage, but it didn`t! It`s been very frustrating, but I`m not going to give up. Tomorrow is a very long day, I`m expecting a good fight with Marcus and there are plenty of opportunities for us to make the right tyre choices this time!"
Chris Atkinson
"I`m disappointed for both myself and the team, it was a silly mistake. The conditions were extremely slippery today and, although I started cautiously, I got caught out on a corner on the second stage and that was the rally over. Again, it`s disappointing to finish a rally like this, but I have to be grateful for the Superally option and the chance to get more experience tomorrow. Although we didn`t drive for very long, I had made a couple of set-up changes, which I felt worked very well. I hope that we`ll have more opportunity to put these settings to the test on Legs two and three."
David Lapworth, Team Principal
"Today has been very much about tyres, weather and stage conditions. We`ve seen the first sunny conditions after several days of heavy rain and because of this the conditions on the stages have been very difficult to predict. The situation was compounded this afternoon by an isolated rain shower that hit one of the stages and caught most people by surprise. But even though in hindsight our tyre choices were less than perfect, our position at the end of the day is very close to the leaders. With less than 25 seconds covering four cars in the top five, the battle for podium places is still wide open."
Leg two will start at 0700hrs, when the first car will leave Kemer parc ferme. Crews will then contest seven stages west of Kemer and 150.49 competitive kilometres, making it the longest Leg of the event. The first stage will start at 0733hrs and the day will conclude with a 45-minute service back in Kemer at 1901hrs.


Tags: subaru, turkey, peter, solberg,