The Skoda Motorsport World Rally team has admitted that they had 'hoped for better' on the opening round of the 2005 FIA World Rally Championship, the Rallﷺye Monte Carlo, which started today.

Alex Bengue and Armin Schwarz completed the💞 opening leg in 12th aꦏnd 15th places respectively, the last of the works drivers'.

Bengue began his first event for Skoda by sett𒊎ing the ninth fastest time on the opening special stage - on only his second Monte Carlo Rally. He then suffered hydraulic problems with his Fabia WRC that affected the start-line launch control system.

"Today has been a learning day for Caroline and me," he noted.💦 "I made a good start but then had some problems that were partly technical and partly because I need more time to get used to the car.

"I have deliberately not set myself performance targets for this rally and my wish is to learn as much as I c🅷an and build a platform for the future."

Schwarz meanwhile had to drive most of the first two stages with a sticking throttle before the problem coul🅠d be resolved in service.

"This is not the event where you want to have a probl𓄧em with the throttle so I was quite relieved to get through the first two stages with nothing more serious than some lost time," stated the German.

"After that the car worked ok although I made a mistake for the third stage by setting the dampers too hard a𒁏nd it made the car quite nervous."

Skoda boss, Martin Muehlmeier is hoping for better things over the next two days.

"We had hoped for a better result than this but our fortunes have not been kind to us today," he concluded. "We have had some small but costly technical problems andﷺ our drivers have made some mistakes so I hope that these things are now behi🐻nd us and we can improve our result over the remaining two days of this rally."