Rally Finland: Skoda final summary

Janne Tuohino and Armin Schwarz brought the Škoda Fabia WRC 05 home in 10th and 11th places respectively on Rally Finland.

Jani Paasonen's rally ended on SS5 when a rear wheel collapsed under the car following a heavy landing after a jump that caused problems for several crews.

The final leg of the event was run in muddy conditions after heavy overnight rain. The two Škoda Motorsport World Rally Team drivers took a cautious approach to maintain their positions on a day when there were few changes to the leaderboard.

The World Rally Championship heads to Germany for the first asphalt event since Monte Carlo. The Škoda Motorsport World Rally Team line-up for Rallye Deutschland (August 26-28) will be Armin Schwarz/Klaus Wicha, Alex Bengue/Caroline Escudero and Jan Kopecký/Filip Schovánek.

Quotes:

Janne Tuohino: There was a lot of water on the stages this morning and so there was no point in taking stupid risks to try and catch Henning. I was quite surprised at the conditions. The car has been good all weekend and it seems we have found better reliability after our recent tests.

Armin Schwarz: Today was not the time to push too hard and spoil a decent result. I knew that I couldnt improve my position so I decided to drive carefully and hope for a trouble-free day.

Joan Sureda (Škoda Motorsport Team Manager): We saw from our performance here that the testing we have done has brought further improvements to the Fabias performance and I was particularly pleased with our increased reliability.

It was unfortunate that Jani had his problems on the opening day as we might have had an even better team result. Armin drove exactly as we asked him to do and brought the car to the finish. Janne started carefully and sensibly but I was disappointed that he was unable to significantly increase his pace yesterday and today.

-skoda-