PETTER Solberg and Phil Mills sealed sixth position overall at the finish of the Rally of Turkey keeping Banbury's Subaru World Rally Team in third position overall in the manufacturers' championship.

As importantly, with two tricky rallies completed in the new Impreza WRC2008, the team are confident about putting the many lessons learned into practice during the six-week break in the World Rally Championship calendar.

As was the plan, the crew now have a six-week gap without a WRC event in which to consolidate knowledge from these first two rallies. Having identified various areas for fine-tuning, the type of which are only truly demonstrated in the heat of competition, the feverish pace of work will continue in the UK in preparation for Finland in August.

David Lapworth, SWRT technical director, said: "We've successfully completed the first stage of our development programme for our new car and are really happy with the progress we've made to date.

"We are in a very good position to really take advantage of the season break and accelerate the second phase of the programme, which is using the competitive experience we now have with the car to improve it step-by-step. We will also conduct asphalt testing for the three sealed surface events in the second half of the season. With a brand new car we've shown promising performance, and we're feeling confident of our competitiveness for the rest of the year."