Arai says new car will pick up pace

Subaru driver Toshi Arai says that he is sure that the new R4 specification Impreza can pick up pace on his remaining rounds of this year's IRC season.

“This was a very long test session. We were [in Corsica] to learn and to improve the car. We didn’t know so much about this car on Tarmac because we only tested once in Austria. We have done our work on gravel, where we know we can be strong. We are also trying different Yokohama tyre compounds, which gave us a lot of good information.”

Running on Yokohama tyres, the double Production World Rally Champion made the Impreza R4's competitive début on last week's Tour de Corse, which was, in his own words, a “very long test session”. He finished 13^th overall, with limited knowledge of how the car would behave on tarmac, having only tested the car in tarmac trim once before.

Subaru will field Arai and another hugely experienced Japanese driver, Fumio Nutahara, on July's Sata Rally Acores, where the pair will be looking to improve the car on tarmac before their first gravel rally in the new car, RACMSA Rally of Scotland in October.