Suzuki retires after strong early showing at Rally of Turkey

The second day of the Rally of Turkey provided one of the toughest challenges of the World Rally Championship season. The mountainous stages to the west of the rally¹s host town of Kemer were, once again, bathed in sunshine ensuring they were baked hard. Both Suzuki SX4 WRCs made it through the opening stage of day two without any problems. Unfortunately for Toni Gardemeister and P-G Andersson, both drivers retired on the next stage ­ Gardemeister¹s car with a broken radiator, Andersson¹s with an electrical glitch.

The two Suzuki SX4 WRCs demonstrated strong reliability through the opening leg, but succumbed to the exceptionally rough conditions and tremendously high ambient temperatures on the Kemer-based Rally of Turkey. Neither of the SX4 WRCs will start the final day tomorrow. The engine in Gardemeister¹s car was overheated after the radiator was broken, while the sister Suzuki of Andersson was hit by an electrical issue, which first occurred on the opening day.

Toni Gardemeister: ³There are positives to take away from this rally. We have been quick, quicker than before with the gap regularly below one second per kilometre down on the leader. But when you have some trouble, it¹s always disappointing. We were about half way through the stage when I noticed the car was starting to lose power. Then the engine temperature was going up. I thought this could be because we were in a very twisty section of the stage ­ it¹s normal for the temperature to rise in this condition. But when it carried on going up, then I knew we had to switch off ­ the radiator was broken. My shoulder was also hurting a little. I hit a big rock early in the stage, which knocked it badly. I had to drive one-handed for a while again. The next round of the championship takes us home to Finland and that¹s an event I¹m really looking forward to. We will have a test and some new parts to come from the car. It¹s nice to know the SX4 WRC will be even faster when we get to my home.²

Paul Wilding, Suzuki World Rally Team manager: ³We have seen more pace coming from the Suzuki SX4 WRC on this rally. It would have been nice to have got through more stages, as every kilometre we do with this car means more experience for the drivers and the team. P-G has lost a lot of time missing stages today, so the team felt it more worthwhile to trace the cause of the electrical problem here in the service park rather than sending the car out again.²

Final positions
1. M Hirvonen/J Lehtinen FIN Ford Focus RS 4hr 42min 07.1sec
2. J-M Latvala/M Anttila FIN Ford Focus RS 4hr 42min 15.0sec
3. S Loeb/D Elena FRA Citroen C4 4hr 42min 32.8sec
4. D Sordo/M Marti ESP Citroen C4 4hr 44min 32.7sec
5. H Solberg/C Menkerud NOR Ford Focus RS 4hr 44min 40.8sec
6. P Solberg/P Mills NOR Subaru Impreza 4hr 44min 55.3sec
7. M Wilson/S Martin GBR Ford Focus RS 4hr 46min 31.3sec
8. C Rautenbach/D Senior ZIM Citroen C4 4hr 49min 53.8sec
9. F Villagra/J Perez Companc ARG Ford Focus RS 4hr 51min 41.2sec
10 B Clark/P Nagle GB Ford Focus RS 4hr 56min 55.9sec