in Italy
The Latvian LMT Rally Team crew of Andis Neiksans and Peteris Dzirkals, tied seventh in the overall 2009 FIA Production car World Rally Championship standings, will start this weekend’s Rally d’Italia Sardegna with one objective – to put the disappointment of Vodafone Rally de Portugal behind them and to score more points and hence advance in the overall rankings.
“We started the season really well – two fifth positions in Norway and Cyprus put us joint third in the P-WRC standings. Unfortunately, this was followed by engine trouble and a retirement in Portugal. We didn’t do Argentina and now we are seventh in the P-WRC. That’s not too bad but we will have to fight hard just to keep that position and extremely hard if we want to improve on it!” says Neiksans, who is the highest-placed P-WRC rookie this season so far.
The AMP Motorsport team had a huge amount of work to do in the six weeks between Portugal and Sardinia. The most important issue was the engine and to ensure everything was in order, the team visited Finland for two days of testing.
“The testing went quite well. We now have completely different engine maps to the ones we used in Norway, Cyprus and Portugal – they are safer but more efficient. We may have lost a little in terms of maximum torque and power but the torque curve is much wider and flatter and the car is easier to drive. We also changed some differential settings – that should also improve our performance in Italy,” concludes Neiksans.
The elder brother of Andis – Maris Neiksans – competed in last weekend’s BTA Rally Talsi, a round of the Latvian Rally Championship in Andis’ car and was positive about the changes made to the engine and differential settings. He finished fourth in Group N, losing out on a podium place to Finland’s Juha Salo by 20 seconds and ahead of Britain’s Guy Wilks.
Andis Neiksans was also present in Talsi but only for the recce. “We have very positive feedback on the car from my brother. That’s encouraging. With 15 P-WRC runners in Italy it is not going to be easy to earn points but that’s our aim. Before the season we said that we want to finish as many rallies as possible and to earn P-WRC points in every rally we finish. Nothing has changed,” said the 24 year-old Latvian.
This year, Andis Neiksans and Peteris Dzirkals are running a full P-WRC campaign. They are competing in Norway, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Great Britain.
