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The Subaru World Rally Team continued to show impressive form ahead of Rally de Portugal, with the cars of Petter Solberg/Phil Mills and Chris Atkinson/Glenn Macneall ending shakedown on Thursday with the two fastest times overall.

The big talking point for this event is the route, which includes a selection of 18 special stages which are unfamiliar to most drivers. With two days of recce and today's shakedown behind them, Subaru's chargers have some thoughts about the looming challenge.

Petter said: "These stages are very difficult. The ones on leg two are the toughest I have ever experienced. They are completely different to anything we drive elsewhere on the calendar. We need a good result and we need to drive through the rally without any problems. If that goes to plan I think we have a chance of a good result, but let's see what happens. I will try hard, like always."

In the other works Impreza WRC2007, Chris Atkinson was feeling quite at home on the dirt roads of southern Portugal.

He said: "The stages are very similar to the ones we drove on Rally Australia when it was based in Queensland, with some gum trees lining the roads, although I haven't seen any koala bears yet!"

When he's not searching for the local wildlife, Chris is hopeful of backing up his fifth-place finish in Mexico with another strong result here in the Algarve.

"We still haven't done any testing between the previous rally and here, so we're still learning about the car every time we drive it," added Atko. "It will be a few more rallies before we're on top form, but things are moving in the right direction. The set-up of the car is coming along, Petter, myself and the engineers sit down and try to come up with an effective package, and the signs from shakedown are that we're on the right track. Our target here is to finish in the top five, although in Mexico we ran as high as second, so you never know what can happen."