Subaru pleased by damper progress
| By David Evans |
Friday, May 16th 2008, 14:02 GMT |
 Subaru World Rally Team principal David Richards says the changes made to the Impreza WRC2007's damper set-up since last month's Jordan Rally are reaping rewards already - with Chris Atkinson third after this morning's first loop of Rally d'Italia stages in Sardinia.
The Banbury-based team have spent the last two weeks looking closely at the Bos dampers which caused Subaru – and Petter Solberg in particular – major problems on the last event in Jordan.
Richards admitted they had found a fault with the suspension parts and that it had been put right before the start of this week's Rally d'Italia.
"We have got a lot of people working on this. And we've made some very good progress," Richards said. "Look at the times this morning, the car's up there with the Fords and that's a good step for us.
"There was an inherent technical fault in the way the dampers had been put together, but we've taken control of stripping the dampers and rebuilding them and we can see the results of this here.
"This is a good result for a car which is four years old – and don't forget that car's using a gearbox which is 19 years old."
Atkinson was similarly pleased with Subaru's progress on the damper issue after finishing the morning sharing third place with Ford's Mikko Hirvonen.
"We have made a step. There's more to do, but the car's in the ball park," Atkinson said. "It's really not far away. I'm pretty happy with this."
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