Mads Ostberg plans to adopt a certain amount of caution on Vodafone Rally de Portugal as he bids to reach the finish of round four of the FIA World Rally Championship powered by Nokia.
The Adapta World Rally Team ace, currently third in the WRC drivers’ standings, arrives in the Algarve on the back of point-scoring finishes in Sweden and Mexico.
In order to extend his strong run to three events, Ostberg says pushing from the start is best avoiding given the demanding nature of the gravel event, which features 22 special stages over a total competitive distance of 434.77 kilometres.
“It’s really important to be clever on this event,” said the Norwegian, a three-time podium finisher in the WRC. “You can’t go on the limit all the time but have to hold back where it’s needed. In rallies we know we want to challenge the podium and that’s what we’re going to do this weekend. But it’s going to be a hard fight with all the factory drivers.”
Ostberg will start the event on the back of a successful pre-event test last Sunday when he covered approximately 100 kilometres in the Ford Fiesta RS WRC he will use this week.
“It’s good being able to test before a rally again,” said Ostberg. “We had some trouble in the morning but when we fixed that we got to test out what we wanted and ended up with a good set-up on the car.”