Gronholm: My title chances look slim
On the eve of the super tough Acropolis Rally, the seventh round on the World Rally calendar, reigning champ Marcus Gronholm has admitted his chances of keeping his crown will be hard
Gronholm has only scored once this year, with uncharacteristic driver errors and an extremely fragile Peugeot 206 WRC stymieing his championship defence. As the WRC heads to Greece, the Finn is 23 points behind championship leader Tommi Makinen, and is hoping for a turnaround in fortunes to kickstart his year.
"It seems to be very difficult now (to mount a title challenge), and we have two rallies coming that are quite hard and you cannot predict anything," said Gronholm. "I don't understand why there is so much trouble with the car. I hope they can be more precise. I hope my fortune will change."
Last time out in Cyprus, all three of the French manufacturer's cars failed to finish - and that was in a newly updated version of the 206. However team manager Jean-Pierre Nicolas believes that the benefits of the new evolution can't be calculated just yet.
"The exceptionally slow speeds of Cyprus are not typical," he said. "I believe we have to wait to see the results of the more traditional rounds before we can evaluate the performance of the 2001 version of the 206 WRC."
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