PETTER Solberg got the Rally Sweden off to a flying start for the Banbury-based Subaru World Rally Team by winning the first Superspecial stage.

The Norwegian said: "It was a great, great feeling to win the Superspecial and lead the rally!

"We are focusing on today though so we are not thinking about that. We always knew today would be tough though and we are losing a bit of time with the grip, but we are still on the way to our target for this rally so this morning has been ok for us.

"The stages are a little bit icy then a little bit of gravel, so grip is very hard. We've seen a few mistakes and cars going off the road - it's so easy to do here. So we stick to our plan and drive our own rally.

Team-mate Chris Atkinson said the morning stages were difficult as there was snow on the roads but it was not thick so it easily wore down to the gravel.

He said: "We got stuck in a snow bank about four kilometres into stage three. The car just snapped and we went off. It didn't do much damage, but we couldn't get restarted again for a long time and lost about 15 minutes. We'll look at the data and make some changes to the car this evening in service as I didn't have a good feeling on the ice and gravel.

"We're running third on the road so I hope for us the stages this afternoon will not be too bad, but for sure they will get rutted by the end of the day. We focus now on getting to the end of the rally and scoring some points."