P-G Andersson has ended the Rally d’Italia Sardegna inside the top 10, following three days of faultless running of his SX4 WRC. Andersson, who ended up ninth described his car as ‘perfect’ throughout the entire rally, with the SX4 WRC requiring nothing more than routine servicing at the end of every day. On the final stage he set an excellent sixth-fastest time to finish the rally in style.

His team mate Toni Gardemeister was not so lucky, having retired from day two with broken suspension and failing to finish the final day. Nonetheless, the Suzuki World Rally Team achieved its key objective of improving the reliability of the SX4 WRC in every area, and building solid foundations for the future.

Sardinia is renowned as one of the toughest events on the World Rally Championship, because of its hard surfaces and sharp rocks. Conditions were made even more difficult this year by the unseasonably wet weather, which caused the road surfaces to degrade and exposed yet more sharp rocks.

Despite these obstacles, P-G steered clear of trouble to end the rally just outside the points, having proved that Suzuki’s decision to put the accent on reliability during this event has paid off. Having learnt several valuable lessons for the future, the team is now feeling confident for the next two rough gravel events in the Mediterranean: Greece and Turkey.

Paul Wilding, Suzuki World Rally Team manager: “This has been a very satisfying rally for us as we achieved a lot of what we set out to do: to try to get the cars to the finish despite some very rough and challenging conditions. It’s just a pity that we couldn’t achieve this with both SX4 WRCs, but we will be analysing what happened with Toni’s car very carefully, and I’m confident that we’ll keep learning and improving into the future. I’d like to thank all the team and drivers for a great job throughout the weekend.”