Suzuki SX4 WRC ready for more rough running in Turkey

The Suzuki World Rally Team has begun the latest chapter of the challenge for the 2008 World Rally Championship. After overcoming the toughest roads the Middle East, Sardinia and Greece could throw at the Suzuki SX4 WRCs of Toni Gardemeister and P-G Andersson, the pair are now readying themselves for the delights of Turkey. After a successful run through this morning's shakedown stage, both crews headed north of the rallies home for the next three days in Kemer for the 2.6-kilometer superspecial stage at the Akdeniz University. Both drivers enjoyed the opportunity of competitive action by way of a loosener for the eight day one stages which will follow tomorrow.


Car news - Suzuki SX4 WRC n.11 (Gardemeister), n.12 (Andersson):
Both cars were put through their paces at the shakedown stage this morning, which is felt to be one of the most representative shakedown tests in the World Rally Championship. The test was used for both Gardemeister and Andersson to fine-tune the set-up of their respective Suzuki SX4 WRCs. Both cars are running in similar trim to the last time out - when both cars scored manufacturers' championship points - on the Acropolis Rally. The cars then both completed SS1 without any problems and were returned for the overnight parc ferme, 40km south of the opening stage in Kemer.


Driver news:
Toni Gardemeister: "This is always quite a tough rally and from what we have seen in the recce there will be some difficult places in the route. Like the last rally in Greece, there are going to be some very rough places. One of the features of this rally is that some of the stages are used many times. Like tomorrow, a section of the Myra stage is used also on the second day - this means that when we are coming back into these places, the road can be quite bad with a lot of rocks around."

P-G Andersson: "Okay, so tomorrow the real rally starts. Things have been looking good with the team. We have done a lot of work with the car and the reliability is very good now. I'm looking forward to this event. It's going to be twisty and very, very tough, but it should be quite so hot as Greece. Okay, maybe in the service park it can be quite warm, but in the mountains - where we are driving - it's cooler up there. The stage tonight was fine, no problems. It's good to get some competition in before tomorrow. But it's tomorrow we're looking forward to. One of the harder things with this rally can be the weather. We're close to the mountains, so you can always see some rain at some time - it's going to be an interesting few days!"


Team news:
Paul Wilding, Suzuki World Rally Team manager: "After the rigours of the last three fairly rough gravel rallies, I think the whole team has learned a great deal about the Suzuki SX4 WRC. We're going to put that into practise here in Turkey. This is another event which is about reliability for us. We want to see the cars at the finish before we start scrutinising the stage times more closely. In Greece, 10 days ago, we achieved that objective and shakedown here in Turkey this morning and the superspecial this evening have both provided us with a good start to that task."

Pos.	Driver	Manufacturers	Time
1	Sebastien Loeb		2:07.6	0.0
2	Petter Solberg		2:08.3	+0.7
3	Mikko Hirvonen		2:08.7	+1.1
4	Jari-Matti Latvala		2:09.9	+2.2
5	Daniel Sordo		2:10.5	+2.9
6	Chris Atkinson		2:11.3	+3.7
7	Federico Villagra		2:11.6	+4.0
8	Andreas Mikkelsen		2:11.6	+4.0
11	Toni Gardemeister		2:12.9	+5.3
16	Per-Gunnar Andersson		2:20.5	+12.9