On Thursday evening, February 9, traditional super special stage at local hippodrome of Karlstad opened second round of World Rally Championship, Rally Sweden.

After a few trainings before the start of their WRC season and morning shakedown, SSS Karlstad was the first real test for new crew of Eurolamp World Rally Team.

According to organizer’s decision, during the super special stage Valery Gorban and Sergey Larens faced with their contender in WRC Trophy – the crew of Lorenzo Bertelli and Simone Scattollin. Italians won the sparring – they were just 0,1 seconds quicker than Ukrainian-Estonian. But during the shakedown on his best attempt Gorban beat the best result of Bertelli by 4 seconds. So, it was still too early to make any conclusions. What was acceptable to pay attention on, were Eurolamp WRT crew’s members’ first impressions from their first work day in World Rally Championship.

«As we remembered, once I had Sergey as co-driver. But it was a long time ago. So we can say that our crew has revived. And we did a lot of work to make successful revival. And I hope that this race will be a lucky one for us», — sad Valery Gorban.

On Rally Sweden Sergey Larens will have not only new driver but new car too. So Eurolamp WRT co-driver particularly focused on this moment: «It is a great car! I like it so much. My new car gives opportunity to race on higher speed… In the slow corners there are no difference compared to a RRC-car, but on speedy sections a WRC-car has great grip. It opens additional opportunities for the crew. And our main goal is to use this opportunities skillfully…»

On Saturday the participants of Rally Sweden will have difficult and long day – they will overcome more than 145 kilometers of seven special stages.