Subaru announces second team for 2009

The World Rally Championship will feature a brand new Manufacturer Team in 2009 after Subaru finalised a deal yesterday with the Norwegian based Adapta World Rally Team.

The Adapta team will run two 2008 (hatchback) specification Impreza World Rally Cars next year under the management of team principal Morten Ostberg and with technical support from the Subaru World Rally Team.

Initially, the deal is for Adapta to run two cars at the ten European events in next year’s calendar, although it has an option to increase the programme to include the two long-haul rounds in Argentina and Australia too.

Adapta’s cars will be serviced in the same area as the factory Subarus next year. And while Adapta engineers will focus on their own cars during events, both teams hope to further the development of the Impreza WRC2008 through pooling technical information.

At this stage the Adapta team’s driver line-up is only half complete. One car is certain to be driven by 20-year-old Norwegian Mads Ostberg but the team is yet to decide on the second crew. Earlier this year Adapta team manager Morgan Andersen - who has since left the outfit - acknowledged that Henning Solberg was one of the names under consideration, but he said the team would wait until the deal had been concluded before ‘going hard’ after a second driver.

The manufacturer team drive is a significant boost to Mads Ostberg’s personal objective of getting a seat with a factory WRC team by 2010. This year the Norwegian youngster is defending his Norwegian Rally Championship title (he won every round in 2007) as well as contesting eight rounds of the 2008 WRC.

His best WRC result so far this year came in Sweden when he held sixth - ahead of Petter Solberg and Chris Atkinson - until he got a puncture on SS9 and eventually finished ninth. Ostberg will contest the forthcoming WRC rounds in Spain, Corsica and GB. Alongside his WRC programme next year Ostberg will also contest the Norwegian Rally Championship in a Subaru Impreza WRC2007.