Peugeot WRC star Richard Burns says his partnership with new race engineer Christian Deltombe will strengthen his chances of wrestling the championship title from team-mate Marcus Gronholm.
Peugeot WRC star Richard Burns says his partnership with new race engineer Christian Deltombe will strengthen his chances of wrestling the championship title from team-mate Marcus Gronholm.
Burns could not match Gronholm’s pace in the Rally of Argentina, but the Briton still heads the championship standings and is confident that he could maintain his position on the log.
“I’ve scored 32 points from five rallies so, overall, things are not too bad – it’s only two fewer than I picked up in the whole of 2002. If we continue like this, we’ll do alright, but that doesn’t mean winning is any less important,” Burns said.
Gronholm has already won three rallies this year, but his failure to finish on the two other events of the season means he’s still behind Burns on points.
“We are here to win,” the Finn said. “Maybe later in the season we will think about tactics, but for now I think everybody wants to win. But if they can’t win they will drive tactically now.”
To this Burns responded: “I wouldn’t like to win the title without any victories, but I don’t think that’s going to happen this year to be honest.”
Burns said the effects of working with Deltombe had been “astonishing” and revealed that had the Belgian not been appointed, the Briton may have lost the desire to stay on at Peugeot.
Deltombe replaced Burns’ previous engineer at Peugeot Jean-Charles Odon just before the Rally of Turkey in March.
“Christian’s cool,” Burns told . “Nothing is a problem with him. If Christian and I want something, he goes off and tries to do it. We at least give it a try.
“The things that I have learned about the car in the past six weeks are astonishing,” he added. “It’s just simple things that I ought to know – stuff like anti-roll bar sizes and spring rates. A couple of weeks ago I had the best test I’ve ever had when we were in Portugal. Things were being listened to and the decisions Christian and I were coming to were having an effect.”