WRC: Nogier delighted with Raikkonen debut

Citroen Junior Team manager Benoit Nogier has praised Kimi Raikkonen after his WRC debut for the squad on Rally Sweden.

The 2007 Formula One World Champion finished down in 30th position on the season-opening event after losing almost half an hour on Friday following a brush with a snow bank. However, the Finnish driver re-joined the rally and reached the finish, setting several promising stage times on the final day of the event.

“Kimi has made a remarkable start on his first World Championship event with us,” said Nogier. “We stuck completely to the plan that we had set out beforehand. Kimi got progressively quicker, but also remained calm in the face of all the new things that he had to learn.”

Raikkonen believed he made significant progress on the rally, despite Friday’s issue, and is looking forward to Rally Mexico next month where he hopes conditions may be a little easier on the gravel-based event.

“We’ve made progress during this event,” said Kimi. “It was important for our experience to finish this first rally of our WRC season. We lost a bit of time with the snowbanks but the main thing was to get through all the special stages.

“We always knew that Sweden was never going to be an easy rally for us to start the season with. But now we are able to prepare for the next event. I haven’t driven the Citroën C4 WRC on gravel yet, but I hope that we can be more consistent in Mexico.”

Watch the WRC on Motors TV (Sky Channel 413, Virgin Media 545) in 2010.


Andy Wilkinson