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Citroen’s troubled C3 World Rally Car has become “more compliant” and will be in better shape for the 2018 World Rally Championship, reckons Craig Breen after recent testing.
All four factory WRC teams tested in France in mid-December in preparation for the 2018 WRC season-opening Monte Carlo Rally next month.
Toyota and Citroen used roads just south of Gap, while Hyundai was closer to Nice and M-Sport in Ardeche.
While Kris Meeke ran in icy, cold, wet and very wet conditions, Breen had a fully dry test day and was pleased with how the C3 had progressed since its 2017 problems first became publicly obvious on this year’s Monte.
“Kris and I shared one of the days and that was fairly wet, but it was dry for my full day – that was quite helpful for me to be able to drive the car in those mixed conditions,” said Breen.
“It felt great. The team has worked really hard with the car and we’ve got everything pointing in the right direction.
“There’s been some valving work done on the dampers and that’s just settled it down on the bumps and made it that bit more compliant.”
Citroen recently announced that Breen would only contest 10 of the 13 2018 WRC rounds, making way for returning nine-time champion Sebastien Loeb in Mexico, Corsica and Spain.
The four WRC teams ran in a variety of conditions in their December tests, but none got the full spread of possible Monte Carlo weather so they will all test in France again in early January.
“A bit of snow would be really handy then,” Breen added.
Tanak insight helping Toyota
Ott Tanak had a mixture of snow, ice and dry running as he continued to acclimatise to new team Toyota, while team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala had full snow for his test.
“Always when you have a driver from another team, especially a winning team, there is some small bits and pieces that can help your car,” said Latvala of working with Tanak.
“It’s good to hear what Tanak is thinking of our car.
“My test was good. We have worked hard on the centre differential and driving in the full snow, everything was working really well.
“It’s quite rare to get these good conditions for the Monte test.”
The 2018 World Rally Championship will be launched at Autosport International, held on January 11-14. For ticket information, click here.