Araujo to move on from Finland

Armindo Araujo is already focusing on ADAC Rallye Deutschland later this month following a frustrating outing on Neste Oil Rally Finland, which finished in Jyvaskyla on Saturday night.

The WRC Team MINI Portugal driver languished in 15th on the gravel round last week and admitted to being unable to match the speed of his pacesetting rivals.

However, he has targeted an upturn in form on the three upcoming sealed-surface rounds, starting with Germany’s qualifier in Trier from 23-26 August when he will pilot Prodrive’s latest-evolution MINI John Cooper Works WRC run by Motorsport Italia.

“Last year we did good races on Tarmac and MINI is more competitive on Tarmac so we will try to do a good result,” said the double Production Car world champion. “We hope the new evolution will give us a little more speed. It’s only small details here and there but we are really confident for Germany.”

Of his failure to shine in Finland, Araujo said the lack of a pre-event test had held him back.

“Finland is always difficult, it’s my second time here and to be fast in the WRC you need to test and to make a lot of kilometres,” said the Portuguese. “Unfortunately it was not possible to make any tests so we had no set-up. When we started it was more or less testing what’s possible or not. Also in the Qualifying Stage we didn’t make a good time so we started in the front and lose a lot of time cleaning the road. Everything together meant the speed was not coming like we wanted but we will test for Germany and we will see what will be possible.”