Petter Solberg doing rather well in the first outing for the new Impreza!

 

finished 2nd,

 

WoooooHoooooo!!!!

 

very well done . dont like the grapics on it . looks quite plain imo

 

Nice one Petter, future could be brighter for team Subaru!

 

Great debut and i love the graphics

 

I watched it too.

Top mount intercooler with a feed from the front instead of a scoop

 

Looks abit strange without a scoop

But good to see the new car doing well

 

YouTube - WRC Rally Greece 2008 - P. Solberg

 

Yeah I noticed that, looked weird! But I'm guessing it must work?

 

im sure it does work lol

 

Great result for SWRT!

 

I'm sure its not a top mount intercooler

 

Didn't you see the brief clip with the bonnet up?

Good result, great to see Petter finally get a good result after his long drought

 

I wouldn't get too excited. He finished 2nd, yes, but by default really.

The cars itself wasn't quick enough to finish 2nd in a straight fight. Both Fords lost time through punchures. Can't remember what happened to Loebs team mate, but he was running in 2nd before hitting trouble.

On that basis, Petter would have finished 5th at best.

Petter lost a whole 30 seconds to Loeb in the first few stages on day 3. Loeb then backed off to finish the Rally.

It's certainly and improvement for Subaru & Petter (beating Atkinson for once) but they need to make the car quicker. Much quicker.

 

Petter backed-off on day 3 to ensure he finished the rally with the new car. They mentioned it a few times on the TV coverage.

 

True, he did. Had he not though, he still wouldn't have been able to make any time on Loeb. Unfortunately.

 

a result is a result! well done petter,shame atkinson could not start his car after a service
martin

 

Being just over a minute behind Leob on the Car's debut is no mean feat - remember he lost 10 secs being stuck in Latvala's dust cloud.

A good result for the team, and will do Petter's confidence the world of good.

 

I'm sure that by changing the graphics they are kicking themselves up their own ***** by getting rid of branding thats recognised the world over, even by people that have no interest in motorsport. What next? Ferrarri changing from red to black!!!

 

I can see you could easily mistake the little red thing above the engine as a turbo intercooler, but don't you think its a little small for the WRC car and won't be getting much cooling there will it!

Oh, and check out the huge intercooler piping leading to the front of the car where the front mount intercooler is located.

 

No he didn't.

He did however lose 10 sec behind Hervonen's dust cloud.

 

sorry but that car is so so ugly looks like a mazda and the old car has had loads of 2nds this year

 

Well done for 2nd, but was this rally somehow selected as it would be known there would be more casualties on this than most other events?

Liked the car, thought the livery was dull and boring.

 

WTF?

Part of any race is being able to finish the damn thing without crashing or breaking the car! Ford didn't manage it, Solberg and Loeb did!

Does that mean Loeb only won by default because the Fords (which have been quicker in a lot of other rallies) had problems too?

 

I agree, it defo has a front mount, the thing on top is the air intake/filter is it not, you can see the CAI running along the top of the bonnet!

Scott.

 

No. What I was saying was, all being equal, the Impreza was way off the pace of the Fords & Citreons.

So don't go expecting victories any time soon.

Loeb was faster than the Fords before they had problems, so he won by being faster.

 

Indeed it is

I was waiting for someone to shoot me down again before I revealed that one

 

UGLY! I take it you drive a beautiful classic then

The old car had 2 seconds and 1 third this year - Hardly loads - and they were as a result of higher placed drivers dropping out (including Solberg himself!). Any good results in the old car were definitely despite the car rather than because of it!

The reason Acropolis was chosen for the first outing is because it is the hardest event of the season on the cars. If you can survive Acropolis, you can survive anything! I doubt Subaru really expected either car to finish the event, never mind finishing in 2nd.

Everyone is assuming that the new car was slower than the other cars, but it could well be part of the tactics. In events like Acropolis, its generally not outright speed that wins it, but reliability. If you push too hard then you break your car - the experienced drivers like Solberg and Loeb know this while the less experienced drivers push hard on the first stage and then start to develop problems!

If you look at the stage times for ss1 & ss2, its the young guns Latvala and Sordo who are heading the field, while Leob, Hirvonen and Solberg form a 2nd slower group that are all quite close. Sordo already starts to get problems on SS3.

Petter's plan for this rally was to 1) get used to the car a bit and 2) get to the finish! The next round in Turkey should see a small improvement with the lessons learnt from Greece, and Germany may also be a little off pace as its the first tarmac rally - otherwise, I think you'll see a very big improvement relative to Ford and Citroen for the rest of the season!

 

I'm so clever

Scott.