Wednesday, October 1 2008 -- Although French asphalt ace Brice Tirabassi will be heading the Subaru World Rally Team heading into Rally de Espana, the team feels that there is still a lack of experience on the surface that will mean that quite a few lessons will be learnt on the track's surface.

Team technical director, David Lapworth, said that although there was a significant step ahead in the development of the car for the surface, with back-to-back rallies in Spain and Corsica, no pre-event tests have meant that Subaru will be relying, to quite an extent, on data gathered earlier in the year at Germany.

"These two tarmac rallies in two weeks will boost us massively, as we learned a great deal just from Rally Germany" said Lapworth. "We'll be using a combination of Markko's base setup from his early tests and improvements we have been able to make after Germany to take another step forward on tarmac.
"We are very happy with testing so far, and the conditions in which Markko did all the early tarmac testing are far more similar to the roads in Spain than those in Germany so it should suit us better. We have had limited testing here though as a result of our focus on gravel development to date, so at the same time we must be realistic about how far through our refinement process we are with the new car."

Petter Solberg had explicitly mentioned that he had a lot of fun at the last asphalt race in Germany and that he will be looking ahead of fifth place, his standing in that race. "It won't be easy, but it's a rally I like and the route is fun to drive," he said. "Spain is a very different rally to Germany with very different roads, a lot cleaner and more flowing, but if you can drive, you can drive, so it's not that big a change. It'll be an important rally though as it'll go a long way to deciding the result in Corsica the week after."

Chris Atkinson, the other Subaru driver currently in fourth place in the standings, finished Germany in sixth place. He will be looking ahead to another challenge on the Spanish stages. "The roads are wide, smooth and high-grip, and you can carry a lot of corner speed because of this," he explained. "It's about the highest lateral load we get all season, and whilst it doesn't really affect us because we train for it, you notice it for sure inside the car. Because it's smooth it gets very slippery when it rains as the water doesn't run away, but when you get a series of corners right, it's a great feeling."

Frenchman Brice Tirabassi, and co-driver Fabrice Gordon, will handle the Impreza WRC2008 in the two asphalt stages. The 2003 J-WRC champion mentioned that he was raring to get going as this was his first opportunity behind a Factory-spec Subaru. "I don't have much experience of driving a WRC car, but I know both events quite well so I am looking forward to getting going," he said. "I like Spain, so I hope this means I can focus more easily on learning the team and the car. My objective in Spain is to understand the car better and find the limit, and carry all this into Corsica the week after."