Personally i think the Acropolis was a great result for the subaru rally team as a 2nd position finish on debut with a new car must have given the whole team a huge boost in confidence for the rest of the season ahead, i am a realist though and their were a lot of factors that helped Petter to a 2nd placed finish as both Fords had a terrible rally with numerous mechanical problems and rally leader Danny Sordo had bad tyre problems which lead to him stopping a couple of times including taking a penalty.

In Turkey Petter said he had a trouble free run which is a great boost for reliability but the car was almost 3 minutes behind the winner which is light years away in rally terms and it was a long way from a podium finish.

So at the min if both Citroens and Fords finish without serious problems then the new Subaru will be finishing in the same sort of area as the old car did as it has nowhere near the pace to live with the top teams at the min, that is to be expected as its a brand new car and i wouldn`t realistically expect the pace to improve until the back end of the season.

Its great that both cars have finished the first 2 rallies albeit Chris Atkinson has been well down the field so the reliabilty seems to be good so its the pace of the car that now needs to be worked on, its a mid season break now so a lot of things can be ironed out in testing. A tarmac rally will tell us a lot more in my opinion as to where the car stands on pace.

Apparently PS was trying out different set-ups, so finishing was more important than the result. He got some very good splits, though. Didn't CA get a fastest time on one stage too -- though perhaps that was partly because the track had been well swept by other competitors?

In the looks department, I think the WRC is lacking in visual drama. It's rather bland and anonymous in the head-on shots on TV, far less recognizable than Fords and Citroens.