McRae still Unsure about Pace

The 1995 World Champion is competing in this year's Wales Rally GB with Skoda but was only 14th quickest in this morning's Shakedown session. He was two seconds slower than teammate Armin Schwarz and six and a half seconds behind Shakedown topper Petter Solberg on the 3.90km Filindre warm-up.

McRae admits there are parts of the Skoda Fabia WRC 05 he would like to change, but is happy with the balance of the car already.

McRae said: "In the Shakedown the conditions were terrible. There was a lot of water, very slippy and very unpredictable. But the car still felt nice. We were still pushing really quite hard and the car wasn't doing anything it shouldn't be doing,

"It is going to take time to find the speed and the confidence through the stages because they are very fast and quite tricky. It is going to take time and it is very difficult to know how long it is going to be.

"It would be nice to start on the first stage tomorrow and have a cracking time but I don't think that's going to happen.

"I'll try but it will be about finding the balance between having a reasonable pace and not making a mistake. We are not going to know until mid-morning tomorrow after the first couple of stages, how much confidence we have and how quick we can be."

The Scottish driver last competed on the WRC in the same event in 2003, and McRae says that everything so far has come naturally back to him.

"It has just been like riding a bike ­ you never forget how to do it, it is just how well can you do," he added.