Mini
and Prodrive back - 18 Jul 2010
After months of speculation, Mini and Prodrive
will announce a World Rally Championship programme
this week, according to AUTOSPORT's sources.
Mini's first-ever World Rally Car, which will be
based on the Countryman road car, has been in preparation
for months at Prodrive's Banbury base and the BMW
1.6-litre turbocharged engine recently arrived to
turn a rolling shell into a full World Rally Car.
Testing of the new machine is expected to begin
soon and, as technical director David Lapworth said,
once it starts testing it will not stop."When we
start testing on our rally car development programme,
it will be intensive," said Lapworth. "We still
have a good timescale to work towards for testing
and we're happy with where we're at."
Malcolm
Wilson in Bulgaria - 09 July 2010
Malcolm Wilson has admitted Ford's best chance
of catching the runaway Citroens on today's opening
leg of Rally Bulgaria is if it rains this afternoon.
The French firm totally dominated the morning's
two stages with C4 WRCs occupying the top five places
at the lunchtime service halt.
Mikko Hirvonen is Ford's leading driver in fifth
place, 41.6 seconds behind leader Sebastien Loeb."This
morning certainly hasn't gone the way we wanted
it to," said Wilson. "We didn't expect to come here
and beat Sebastien Loeb, but we did expect to be
much closer to the pace than we are.
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