SEAT pleased with diesel debut

The squad ran the new engine in the cars of Yvan Muller and Jordi Gene in Sweden, and Muller scored the only points of the pair when he finished sixth in race one.

However, the team were happy with the new engine, and they believe that there is a lot more to come from the package.

SEAT Sport director Jaime Puig said: "I'm more than happy with the performance of the TDI. We had some problems, but I hope we can solve them quite easily.

"We could have done better in the second race, of course, but I think the first races with the engine went well."

Gene was also impressed by the new car, and he believes that the changeable weather conditions prevented SEAT from showing the true potential of the engine.

"I'm already convinced that we have a winning car, but we had some small problems that we didn't have in testing," he said.

"I could have been on the podium in the first race, for sure, and so I don't think we were able to show just what the TDI engine is capable of doing."

Muller was pleased to score the first points with the new engine, but he was keen to point out that there was still a lot of work to do on the package.

"It's great that I scored the first points with a diesel, but there's a long way to go in the development of the engine," he said. "The conditions here meant that we couldn't really compare anything between the two cars."