Pirelli sets new standard in Sweden

THANKS TO REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY

PIRELLI SETS NEW STANDARDS IN SWEDEN

Finnish driver Harry Rovanpera drove his Peugeot 206 WRC to his first World Championship win in career. But, even if not winning, Pirelli was definitely the big technical surprise of the Swedish Rally.

In the last few months Pirelli had been involved in an intensive test and development programme with its partners at Ford and Subaru, resulting in the latest J-pattern PZero tyre with asymmetric tread design that has been used to great effect on this year's Swedish Rally. Unfortunately the overall result does not reflect Pirelli's domination of the stage times where its tyres took victory on 13 of the event's 17 stages and, on 6 occasions, Pirelli secured at least the first three Stage positions. But the extra-efficient design of the new J-type tyre, combined with a revolutionary studding system (Pirelli patent worldwide) entirely developped and realized in Italy - as every other tyre supplier rely for the studding job on Scandinavian specialists - made the winning combination.

Situations outside Pirelli's control have combined to deny Carlos Sainz, Colin McRae (both Ford-Pirelli) and Richard Burns (the Subaru-Pirelli driver winning all of last day 5 Stages) the chance to add overall victory to their Stage wins. Without these problems it is fair to suggest that one of these three drivers would have ended the 50-year domination of this event by Scandinavian crews.

For the first time in several years the Swedish Rally has enjoyed the kind of snow conditions for which it is famous. Although the snow was never thick enough to make Pirelli's W-pattern tyre an effective weapon, there was also not the level of frozen gravel that has been a feature of recent Swedish rallies and where Pirelli believes that the new J-pattern tyre would have been even more competitive.

FINAL STANDING (17 SSs in total): 1. Rovanpera (Peugeot), 3h27m01.1; 2. Radstrom (Mitsubishi) +27.9; 3. Sainz (Ford-Pirelli) +37.0; 4. Gardemeister (Peugeot) +2m05.3; 5. Delecour (Ford-Pirelli) +2m25.2; 6. Solberg (Subaru-Pirelli) +2m48.5; 7. Carlsson (Toyota) +3m18.2; 8. Eriksson (Hyundai) +3m35.8; 9. C. McRae (Ford-Pirelli) +4m28.8; 10. Thiry (Skoda) +5m23.6