Wed 15 Mar 2023
Tom Kristensson’s kicked off his FIA European Rally Championship bid by making what he described as “fantastic progress” on last weekend’s Rally Serras de Fafe, Felgueiras, Boticas, Vieira do Minho e Cabeceiras de Basto.
Driving a Pirelli-equipped Citroën C3 Rally2 under the Bilteknik TRT Citroën Rally Team banner, the 31-year-old Swede finished ninth on the challenging gravel event after dropping time with a front-left damaged tyre on stage five.
His performance alongside co-driver Andreas Johansson was particularly noteworthy coming off the back of limited preparation time behind the wheel of his new-for-2023 challenger.
“I’m very happy just to start the rally but then to be able to get into this fantastic car and make some fantastic progress,” the 2020 Junior WRC champion said. “I’d not been sitting in a rally car since the first week of November and then we do one day of testing and then we go into the rally. I was not able to take any big risks or go for anything special yesterday with the conditions but today was much easier to push and with the good starting position and good conditions today it was so enjoyable, so nice.
“For sure [Sunday] was the most enjoyable day and we were able to take quite many steps. I was able to find the limit, go maybe a little bit over and back off again. I have to find the balance over a whole stage, I’m a little bit up and down on pace but otherwise the car and the team and everything worked fantastic and I’m very grateful and happy.
“I didn’t know what to expect in terms of the result but the top 10 is good and with the delay we got it’s even better. For sure we could have done so much more yesterday but to work so hard for such a long time to be here and then go off on stage four, that’s not really for me. As we summed up on the [final] road [section] we didn’t have any moments on this rally at all, we go completely safe, everything was okay but we still found some pace.”
Finland
Italy
Hungary