Petter Solberg claimed three stage wins today to move two places up the overall leaderboard and hold second position on Rally Turkey.

Adjusting his driving style to cope with the unpredictable mountain weather conditions, the Norwegian made some shrewd tyres choices during the day and moved ahead of rival Marcus Gronholm to end the day well poised for a strong points finish tomorrow.

Re-starting the event after an incident on Leg one, Chris Atkinson fulfilled his aim of gaining more experience of the demanding Turkish terrain and experimenting with different set-ups on his Impreza WRC2005.

Petter Solberg
"After all that`s happened so far in this rally, I`m extremely pleased to be in second place tonight. Things are going the right way now and today has been completely different to yesterday when we were a long way off the pace. We were the fastest overall on today`s stages and I think that`s down to the tyres and the weather. Leg one was difficult, but today it`s been warmer and, even with the same tyre compound, the package has worked much, much better. It`ll definitely be an interesting fight with Marcus tomorrow, but my focus is on second place only now. All that matters is that Sebastien doesn`t get too much of a lead in the Championship so I`m going to do all I can to prevent that."



Chris Atkinson
"It hasn`t been an ideal day being first on the road, as we seem to have suffered with the worst of the wet weather. It was difficult to find the level of grip, so we lost quite a lot of time with spins and stalls. But, losing time isn`t so much of a problem for us yet as our priority is still experience. If you take away the time we`ve lost through little mistakes, then the underlying pace is improving and that`s encouraging. For tomorrow, we`ll continue to work on the current set-up, we`ve got limited tyre options, but we`ll have to see what the weather looks like and hopefully we can set some good times."

David Lapworth, Team Principal
"Yesterday, we took a few gambles and were a little disappointed with the outcome. But today, we`ve taken a more conservative approach and it`s paid off. Petter and Pierre (Genon, Chief Rally Engineer) made some changes to the car, which gave Petter extra confidence, and now that he`s in a good fight with Marcus for second place, he`s much happier. Although Sebastien is still looking strong, Petter has managed to reduce his lead by 15 seconds today and keep him under a certain amount of pressure. It`s been a difficult day for Chris who has been leading the field in tricky conditions, but it will stand him in good stead in the future. In fact, his times have been very respectable compared to other drivers with much more experience."

The third and final Leg of the Rally of Turkey starts at 0900hrs, when the first car will leave parc ferme. Crews will then contest two stages, including the longest of the event, the 33.35km epic test from Olympos. The event will conclude when the winning car crosses the finish in Kemer at 1255hrs.


Tags: subaru, turkey, peter, solberg, chris, atkinson,