Pirelli manager supports more snow rallies

With a delegation of Rally Norway officials present at "sister" event, the Uddeholm Swedish Rally, there has been much interest and talk in the WRC community about the Norwegian bid for a round in the WRC calendar.  Teams, drivers and media are speculating about Norway's chances, and the topic of additional winter rallies (Sweden currently being the only one of 16 WRC events) was raised in the pre-event press conference.

Mario Isola, Pirelli's new Rally Manager was representing the Italian tyre manufacturer in Thursday's press conference and among other things was asked whether, with the amount of investment and time that tyre manufacturers put into developing snow rubber, would he like to see more than one snow rally in the championship.

Islo replied "You are right.  At the moment this is the only snow event in the World Championship.  This means you spend a lot of money developing a specific tyre and in testing.  We have a facility in Italy, but the conditions you find here are nothing like we would find in another place.  I have to test this tyre here and it costs a lot of money to come here.  For us it's better to not to have a specific product for this rally or we should have another rally to share the expense on two or three different ones."

Hopefully a good signal for Rally Norway and the excellent facilities at WRC Test Camp Haslemoen!