Mads Østberg secured a sixth place finish in his M-Sport World Rally Team-prepared ‘Ecoboost’ Ford Fiesta RS WRC in the 2016 Rallye Deutschland.
Østberg, with fellow Norwegian co-driver Ola Fløene stayed out of trouble on the German asphalt throughout the three days on their least preferred surface to claim their second best-ever WRC finish on Sunday in sixth.
France’s Eric Camilli/Benjamin Veillas recovered from Friday’s first day mistake on SS1 to recover under Rally2 Regulations to record a sixtieth place finish in Germany.
Despite having very little experience competing in the WRC, Camilli is learning with each rally as he heads to his home rally next month at the Tour de Corse in Corsica.
Østberg said post-Rallye Deutschland “It’s been an enjoyable rally but it’s clear that we have some work to do before Corsica. There are some areas that can be improved on the car set-up, but also some areas of our driving too.
“There were big gaps ahead and behind us so we’ve just been playing around with the set-up to try and improve our confidence in the car. The general set-up is working quite well, but it’s the finer details that we need to work on – mainly the differentials – to bring everything together.
“We have tried a lot of things over the course of the weekend. Not all of them worked out, but I can promise you that we will all be working extremely hard over the next month to ensure we show an improvement in Corsica.”
Credit: M-Sport/McKlein
Camilli added “It’s not been an easy weekend but we have come away with a lot of experience. We didn’t make a great start to this event, but that is life, and we had to pick ourselves up and work hard to rebuild the confidence. I think we did that, and we managed to improve our times quite a lot from one pass to the next.
“A big thanks to the team for all of the work they have done this weekend. It wasn’t the result we wanted, but they put in 100 percent as always. Now, we’re fully focused on Corsica where we will be determined to have a clean run and show another improvement.”
