Galli finds his groove

Stobart VK M-Sport Ford driver Gigi Galli says his stage winning performance on the second day in Jordan is down to a new smoother driving style.

Returning under Superally regulations after retiring from the opening day, Galli won three of Saturday afternoon’s four stages and moved up the leaderboard from overnight 18th to 10th.

The Italian made some small setup changes to his Stobart Ford Focus RS WRC07 but says guidance from the Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Team Principal Malcolm Wilson made a big difference.

“Malcolm gave me some good advice this morning and obviously it’s helped as I managed to get three fastest times this afternoon,” said Galli. “I think before I was attacking too hard - trying to find the times - but now I’m driving more smoothly and it feels a lot better like this. The car has really been great today and now I’m starting to feel the tyres working with me. I feel more relaxed and I’m starting to get a good flow with the stages.”

Matthew Wilson continues to lead the Stobart team’s challenge in Jordan and the Briton will start the final day in sixth - fourteen seconds ahead of his Stobart team-mate Henning Solberg. “We’ve got a battle now with Henning and I think I’m going to have to give it a bit of a push tomorrow to keep out of his reach, said Wilson. I enjoyed today and everything feels good; the car has been great. I still need to keep concentrating for tomorrow. But I’m quite confident as things have gone quite well so far and I haven’t made any mistakes.”

Solberg closed the gap to Wilson on each of the afternoon’s stages and is looking forward to continuing the battle on Sunday. “Today felt much better than yesterday - especially on the second pass of the stages,” said Solberg. “My times were much faster on the afternoon loop as we made a few small changes in service and they helped give me more confidence. I managed to get some time back on Matthew today and it looks like we have a bit of a race tomorrow but there are still quite a lot of kilometres left and we can’t afford to make a mistake on the last day.”