It's going to be an exciting week as WRC Sweden kicks off tomorrow. It's the first time out for the new generation of WRC car and it looks like it's going to be a very tight battle. From today's shakedown stage the cars are very evenly matched which should lead to some great battles throughout the year.
The best thing about the new cars is that everyone is starting with a new car. There are no old cars, or customer spec cars, so the independents could be in with a shot of potentially winning the rally. PG Andersson has actually come out today and said that he thinks he can win! If he is confident enough to say that in public, after such little testing, then he must be feeling very good in the car. I would be delighted to see PG win. He has been in around the top level for a long time now and it would be great to see him finally get a chance to show what he is made off. As well as being good for PG a non works driver winning a rally would be great for the sport. The level of competition in the WRC this last few years hasn't been very good and the sport as a whole has suffered. People have lost interest in the WRC and that can clearly be seen from the difficulty that Petter Solberg, who finished 3rd in the drivers championship last year and a former World Champion has had in finding funding for this years campaign. A strong year of competition would do wonders for the WRC's profile.
It's a pity that they moved the coverage to ESPN and I won't get to see as much WRC as I usually do.
Craig Breen is doing Sweden in his S2000 Fiesta and I understand that I will be the last time he uses the S2000 car before he moves to the R2 Fiesta for the rest of the year. It will be a very tough rally against the local experts and I wish him the best of luck.
