Mads Ostberg set the fastest time in Rally Sweden Shakedown, giving his brand new team a significant confidence boost for the event.
The Norwegian, who is making his first outing in his brand new Ford Fiesta WRC, set a best time of 4 minutes 11 seconds was 0.1 seconds quicker than Citroen’s Craig Breen on the 7.23km test.
In fact Ostberg was the only M-Sport car to show any raw speed as fellow Ford runners Elfyn Evans and Ott Tanak were seventh and eighth quickest respectively and Sébastien Ogier was 16th fastest, 18 seconds off the Norwegian’s time.
Hayden Paddon was the quickest of the Hyundais in third just 0.4 second down on Breen and just 0.1 second ahead of Citroen’s Kris Meeke in fourth.
The two others Hyundais of Thierry Neuville and Dani Sordo were fifth and sixth, followed by Evans in the DMACK entry and Tanak.
Jari-Matti Latvala got off to a slow start in the quickest of the the Toyotas ending the test in tenth place with a time of 4 minutes 16 seconds.
However he was still 12 seconds quicker than team-mate Juho Hanninen who was 15th fastest with a time of 4 minutes 28 seconds.
The championship leader Ogier had a cautious run with a best time of 4 minutes 29 seconds.
In WRC2, M-Sport driver Éric Camilli set the fastest time in the category with a 4 minutes 22 seconds which was good enough for 12th overall.
The Frenchman led his M-Sport team-mate Teemu Suninen by 1.1 seconds with local Skoda works driver Pontus Tidemand in third just 0.7 seconds further back.
Next up was Gus Greensmith in his first event with the M-Sport team.
His time of 4 minutes 30 seconds was only less than half a second slower than the world champion in a more powerful car.
In the WRC Trophy, Valeriy Gorban was quickest than his only competitor Lorenzo Bertelli, despite a spin on his second run.
