L’arrivée et la victoire pour Marcus

Par
Traxx
– 05/02/2006Classé dans :

Un duel passionant à l’avant avec un Marcus qui su garder Seb à distance : des scratchs jusqu’au bout ! Un deuxième duel entre coéquipiers Mitsubishi était au programme : c’est le local Carlsson (3ème) qui a pris le dessus sur Gigi Galli (4ème). Pour Petter, l’enfer jusqu’au bout puisque l’equipage a été disqualifié pour avoir poussé sa voiture. Le classement final :

  1. M. GRÖNHOLM 3:09:01.9
  2. S. LOEB +30.9
  3. D. CARLSSON +2:56.8
  4. G. GALLI +3:03.8
  5. T. RÅDSTRÖM +5:53.3
  6. K. KATAJAMÄKI +7:34.8
  7. X. PONS +8:35.6
  8. H. SOLBERG +9:01.5
  9. J. JOGE +9:17.2
  10. C. ATKINSON +11:33.5
  11. M. HIRVONEN +11:57.4
  12. J. KOPECKŻ +12:19.3
  13. M. WILSON +14:40.4
  14. J. HÄNNINEN +15:14.9
  15. D. SORDO +15:17.7
  16. J. KETOMÄKI +17:12.6
  17. M. STOHL +20:02.3

Marcus Gronholm : This is another fantastic result. After my first test in the Focus RS here before Christmas, I thought I could take a good result in the rally but to win is just amazing. To win both my first two rallies in the car is a dream and it’s good for the future. My birthday isn’t so important now. The big thing for me is that the Focus has proved so competitive all weekend. I just hope that the car will be as competitive on gravel because it would be great to continue this winning run on the next round.
We had a scary moment this morning when hydraulic oil began to leak onto the windscreen midway through the last stage before service. I had to use the manual gearchange system and had no active differential. I carried on until the end of the stage but lost a lot of time.

Sébastien Loeb : Jusqu’au départ de la dernière spéciale, nous avons tout essayé, vraiment tout ! Aujourd’hui, Marcus était le plus fort. Ce matin, lorsque sa voiture a connu un problème et que nous sommes revenus à moins de quinze secondes, nous avons tenté un choix de pneus osé. De la sorte, nous n’avons pas de regrets. Cette nouvelle deuxième place, les huit points ‘Pilotes’ et ‘Constructeurs’ sont bons à prendre pour débuter une saison qui devrait être passionnante : elle sent bon la bagarre !

Daniel Carlsson : Unbelievable! Fantastic! I was so worried in this last stage. I have never been so worried in my whole life.

Thomas Radstrom : Not a bad performance for an old man

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.

Xevi Pons : Au cours de ma quatrième participation à ce rallye, la première au volant d’une WRC, j’ai appris… que j’avais encore beaucoup à apprendre en Suède. J’ai atteint l’objectif qui m’avait été fixé par l’équipe : finir le rallye et ramener des points ‘Constructeurs’. Je suis content de n’avoir pas commis d’erreur. Et aussi d’avoir pu dans certaines spéciales quantifier mes progrès. En plus je marque deux points ‘Pilotes’. Tout cela fait que je garderai un souvenir extrêmement positif de ce rallye !

Henning Solberg : The car has not been working until today. It is too bad it has come so late. The reporter from SVT said, “Your accident made fantastic TV pictures. It was an unbelievable situation”. Henning replied, “I have never experienced anything like that before”.

Chris Atkinson : We’re pretty happy today. We took some steps forward with the set up and learned a bit more. The pace was a bit better and I think we’re learning things for the future. Sweden’s a good fun rally, but it hasn’t been good for our team at all. I’m looking forward to our test for Mexico in a couple of week’s time. I’m hoping for a better result there.

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. 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.

Manfred Stohl : I’ve learned a lot. It was important to see that we can keep up with the best here in Sweden, too. The restart was psychologically important – each completed race kilometre is a lot of help. My thanks go to Bozian Racing. They did a perfect job.

Petter Solberg : I just don’t know what to say. I’m trying to remain positive about things but it’s certainly been a weekend to forget. Clearly we’ve got a lot of work to do now to get things back to normal. I want to thank everyone who supported us this weekend, there were so many Norwegian flags by the side of the road and I’m sorry we weren’t able to get a better result.

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