Andersson open to more R4 outings

"It’s a target to help develop this car"

By Franck Drui

9 August 2011 - 20:59
Andersson open to more R4 outings

PG Andersson says he would contemplate driving Subaru’s R4-specification Impreza in competition again following his debut in the car on Neste Oil Rally Finland last month.

Andersson, from Sweden, finished 15th overall on the World Rally Championship counter aboard a Tommi Makinen Racing-run machine. R4 cars have been designed to bridge the performance gap between standard Group N models and their Super 2000 counterparts by making them lighter and more agile.

He said: “I don’t know what Tommi’s plans are, this is the first car they have completed and they wanted to have it out in Finland so it was a good opportunity and it was good to work with Tommi. It’s a target to help develop this car and I would drive it again but I don’t know what will happen next.”

Asked about the potential of the car, Andersson said: “We still have to work with the weight to get it down a little bit more [than 50 kilograms]. Unfortunately it’s not as close to the Super 2000 because it’s a bigger car. Everything worked on the car and it ran well. The rear was sliding all the time on Friday and I didn’t have enough control to push in the fast stuff but it worked better on Saturday.”

The double Junior world champion continued: “The problem was after Juho Salo retired [his R4-spec Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X on Thursday night] we were in the middle of nowhere and we knew we would look stupid if we did something bad.”

Andersson, 31, sent shockwaves through the sport when he won the first special stage of the new World Rally Car era on Rally Sweden back in February. Since then a lack of funding has restricted his appearances in the WRC.

“It was great experience for us to do [Finland] with the new stages to check the notes,” he said. “Hopefully we get back here in the future and push harder.”

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