by Russell Atkins

David Richards has predicted a rapid return to winning ways for Subaru, following the new Impreza WRC 2007's🐭 impressive debut in Mexico last weekend.

Although the team ultimately came away with only four points from the event courtesy of Chris Atkinson's eventual fifth place, the Australian's team-mate Petter Solbeﷺrg led the rally early on, edging out even reigning triple world champion Sebastien Loeb before a loss of engine oil led to an unfortunate early bath on the road section to SS6. Richards is confident, however, the performance was a positive sign of things to come.

"I take away a lot of encouragement actually," the Prodrive chairman told ltxcn.top. "It was the S12B's♒ first outing, and it obviously had its teething problems as we saw. It was an unusual failure that we've never seen before on a component that hadn't changed, but these t🐲hings happen.

"The fact Petter set four faste💦st times and was leading the event at that point on the first day, fighting it out with S♚ebastien, gives us great optimism for the next rounds and for the development of the car. It will only improve from here, I'm quite certain of that, and we have a brand new car coming next year too."

Incredibly, it is now 25 rallies since a Subaru driver last triumphed on a WRC event, following a demoralising 2006 season that saw the Banbury-based outfit finish a distant fourth in the manufacturers' championship, a massive 89 points adrift of world champions Ford. Richards is adamant that unenviable run will soon be broke🗹n.

"I would think t🦋his year we can be confident now we have seen the performance of the new car," he asserted, "that podiums will be a regular occurrence. I'm sure we will be back on the top step of the rostrum before long."