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MIDDAY QUOTES, RALLY SWEDEN, DAY 1

• Categoria: Ralis internacional

Evgeny Novikov (5th) said:   “The stages were very slippery this morning. On the first stage [SS2] we took it easy to see how much grip we had to work with. Then I made a small mistake at the start of the second [SS3] one but it wasn’t a big drama.   “I hope this afternoon will be easier for us because, running so early in the order, the first pass was very difficult. The lines on the exits of the corners are not so clean and we are the first car on the road to really use the snow banks so it was not as wide as it could be!”  

Mads Østberg (6th) said:   “It was a difficult morning. Quite early on the first stage [SS2] I had alarms on the dash and we were losing water – first I lost the water pressure and then the temperature increased so we had to slow down quite a lot.   “After the stage we had to stop and try to find the problem. We found it, but we couldn’t fix it properly, so it was still leaking a bit. We managed to get through, but then we had even more bad luck on the second stage [SS3] when the padding from behind my seat fell between my feet so I had to play football and drive at the same time almost all the way through the stage!   “OK, we set some good times so the pace is definitely there. It’s just very disappointing and now we need to fight as hard as we can to make sure we get a good position back in the end.”  

Juho Hänninen (7th) said:   “This morning wasn’t as good as I would have liked it to be. Especially on the first two stages [SS3 and SS4] I couldn’t find a consistent rhythm and was a bit too careful. But the last one [SS4] was much better. I was driving better and had a lot more confidence in the car and also the conditions. I hope this afternoon will be like this and that we can keep on improving.”  

Thierry Neuville (9th) said:   “For me, the first two stages [SS2 and SS3] were pretty horrible to be honest! I wasn’t so confident with the car because the surface was not the same as what we had during testing so I struggled a lot. But on the last stage [SS4] the conditions were really good – like what we saw during the test and Free Practice – so we could drive faster and the times were better.   “I don’t think I was too bad over Colin’s Crest either! I didn’t take it flat, but the car jumped very high so it was a nice moment. I think we’ll make a few small changes for the first two stages [in the afternoon], just to get a bit more traction. Then for the last one, we’ll revert back to the normal set-up.”

Matthew Wilson (27th) said:   “You could say it was a bit of a comedy show this morning! It felt really good on the first stage [SS2] but there’s a junction towards the end before you go back onto the fast section and we just slid wide and got dragged into the snow bank.   “We were digging it out and told the spectators to slow Khalid [Al Qassimi] down, and the next thing he went off in the same place so we were parked nose-to-tail. The spectators then split to try and help the both of us so it took a while and we lost over five minutes.   “After that we were just ploughing the road and it is really difficult to get any sort of grip. But it’s getting better and better and we’re getting a much better feeling in the car. We lost maybe eight or ten seconds with a half spin in the last one [SS4], but that’s just the way it is.”