Rally Norway 2007 Leg 2

End of stage comments: Stage 12 Lillehammer

Heavy snow, misty, 0°C

17 Andreas Mikkelsen/Ola Fløene (Ford Focus)
There was such little grip that it was so easy to spin your wheels.  Our car is okay but I cannot believe the lack of grip. 

25 Juho Hänninen/Mikko Markkula (Mitsubishi Lancer WR05)
It was very slippery.  Over the jump I went too fast and took too much of a jump, but there was no problem.

6 Daniel Carlsson/Denis Giraudet (Citroen Xsara WRC)
It was so slippery that I was all over the place all of the time. 

9 Jari-Matti Latvala/Miikka Antilla (Ford Focus RS WRC 06)
There was no grip at all.  It’s not so bad for me because I have less of the new snow to deal with.  But it was still really bad.  At least my time was okay.  The biggest problem was there were no lines in to the corners because of the fresh snow.

8 Chris Atkinson/Glenn MacNeall (Subaru Impreza WRC 2006)
We managed to fix the engine problem from the road section coming to the stage by clearing the snow out of the air intake.  So we’ve got enough power.  The only thing we didn’t have was grip. 

5 Manfred Stohl/Ilka Minor (Citroen Xsara WRC)
It was just very difficult with lots of snow and I don’t like tight stages like that.

10 Henning Solberg/Cato Menkerud (Ford Focus RS WRC 06)
I’ll try my best but it’s very hard with all the snow.  I had to use my bumper to take away a lot of the snow to get round the corners.

19 Gigi Galli/Giovanni Bernacchini (Citroen Xsara WRC)
(Hit a snow bank and came in late.) I couldn’t see anything and I went into a snow bank.

21 Toni Gardemeister/Jakke Honkanen (Mitsubishi Lancer WR05)
It’s hard to keep the motivation up.  It was just difficult to see.

7 Petter Solberg/Phil Mills (Subaru Impreza WRC 2006)
We didn’t have the same gearbox problem we had on the mountain stage.  The only problem we had in there was snow: it was very hard to get through.

1 Sébastien Loeb/Daniel Elena (Citroen C4)
(Went into a snowbank and lost 8 minutes) I missed a junction because I lost grip on my braking and I went into a snow bank.  At first there was just few spectators and not enough to get me out.  The car was half in a ditch and half on the road, but there was no damage and the engine was fine.

3 Marcus Grönholm/Timo Rautiainen (Ford Focus RS WRC 06)
I saw Sébastien stuck in a junction but he did not get in my way. My problem was no grip and no visibility. 

4 Mikko Hirvonen/Jarmo Lethinen (Ford Focus RS WRC 06)
There is still pressure on me, even with Sébastien having a problem.  There was just so much snow and fog that it became really hard to see.

20 Jan Kopecky/Filip Schovanek (Skoda Fabia WRC)
The changes that I made to my car yesterday made it easier to drive, but I still don’t like this stage in the conditions.

27 Tord Linnerud/Ragnar Engen (Peugeot 206 WRC)
I didn’t see one of the junctions because of the snow and I ended up taking a short cut which basically meant going through a snow bank and did quite a bit of damage to the car.  I need to check if I have damaged the engine.

45 P-G Andersson/Jonas Andersson (Suzuki Swift S1600)
It was very difficult braking on the loose snow.  But I managed to get a good rhythm. even though I have a good lead, I still can’t relax.

31 Patrik Sandell/Emil Axelsson (Renault Clio R3)
We had a problem with the engine at the start of the stage.  It wouldn’t start, so I was one minute late leaving.  There was no problem in the stage, but I’ve lost some time.

32 Urmo Aava/Kuldar Sikk (Suzuki Swift S1600)
The big gap between me and the cars in front made it so uncertain about what line to take.  There was so much snow and I made so many mistakes.

37 Aaron Burkart/Timo Gottschalk (Citroen C2 GT)
I have never seen so much snow before, in a rally car.  Because you can’t see where the lines are, you can’t stay in the rut and therefore the car just oversteers.

39 Andrea Cortinovis/Flavio Zanella (Renault Clio)
I didn’t spin but it was very difficult.  I just need more experience in this car.

36 Jan Mölder/Katrin Becker (Suzuki Swift S1600)
I had no windscreen demister on the previous stage but I managed to get some liquid to treat the problem and so I could see where he was going.  I’m still very unhappy after the visibility problem on the previous stage, but at least this time I could see where I was going.

47 Alessandro Bettega/Simone Scattolin (Ford Fiesta Super 1600)
I got stuck in a bank in a very narrow place.  It was impossible to reverse, but thankfully there were lots of spectators and they and my co-driver got me out.  But we lost two to three minutes.

46 Shaun Gallagher/Clive Jenkins (Citroen C2 R2)
We’re struggling to get the car to handle the way it did when we had the smaller tyres (changed last night due to a problem with overheating) and the problem was that there was so much oversteer and the back end kept sticking out.

42 Aigar Pärs/Ken Järveoja (Suzuki Swift S1600)
It was very slippery and we had to look very hard at each corner to see where to go.

43 Vilius Rozukas/Audrius Shoshas (Suzuki Swift S1600)
It was very slippery but I don’t think I lost too much time