Atkinson not giving up on Wales top 10

Chris Atkinson says he’s not giving up on scoring FIA World Rally Championship points on Wales Rally GB at the wheel of his MINI John Cooper Works WRC.

Atkinson, from Australia, starts the final day of the 19-stage event 55.6s adrift of Martin Prokop, who holds 10th overall in his Ford Fiesta RS WRC starting Sunday’s six all-gravel tests.

“We’re one position off getting WRC points, but it’s tough to catch the guys in front of us,” said Atkinson. “’We’ve done some work and we got a new engine map to put in the MINI for tomorrow which should make a couple of improvements to the engine performance and the turbo control. Anyway, the rally is still plenty long enough for anything to happen.”

Of his performance on Saturday, the WRC Team MINI Portugal driver added: “It was a positive day overall. We weren’t as fast as we wanted to be but we narrowed the gap down to our target of one second a kilometre off the pace on a couple of the morning stages and I feel there’s still room for improvement.

“It was a pretty straightforward day regarding the set-up,” Atkinson continued. “We tried a few things regarding the balance of the car trying to get the sensation from the chassis that I’m looking to try and pick up the pace a bit [on Sunday]. We made those changes at midday service and I feel that it helped us a bit in the afternoon stages.

“This decision to run on hard compound tyres wasn’t quite spot on because it was quite cold up in the stages and we struggled a little bit under the trees and anywhere where it was more slippery. On the bright side, it was good practice and we really hope it will help us on the future gravel rallies.”