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Q & A with Prodrive's David Lapworth

Prodrive has return to the World Rally Championship with a new car for the first time since 2008, with the Mini John Cooper Works S2000 making its debut on this week's Rally of Portugal

AUTOSPORT spoke to technical director David Lapworth about the progress of the Mini.

Q. What's the difference in the engine between this [S2000] Mini and the car Kris Meeke will drive in Sardinia?

David Lapworth: Nothing. There's no difference in terms of horsepower. The flywheel is different on the World Rally Car, but that's the only difference.

Q. And elsewhere in the car?

DL: Small differences, obviously the aero, the front and rear wings, [the WRC has] Perspex windows.

Q. And the brakes?

DL: They're the same on gravel, but on asphalt we're allowed a cooling system and an extra caliper.

Q. What we see here is pretty representative then?

DL: It is. Depending on the nature of the stage, this car is between half a second and a second down on the WRC. In a twisty stage, somewhere like Cyprus, the aero's not going to give anything like the benefit it will on a quick rally like Finland. It also depends on the driver. The aero has an objective effect on the car, but it also depends on the confidence of the driver. The speed of this car is also dependent on how you set the car up. Do, for example, set the car up to try and address those points, by making the car a little bit easier to drive because it will lack the stability the aero will give.

Q. How does it feel for you to be back?

DL: It's great. We're here to observe and see what we can learn on top of the testing we've done. It's the old thing about learning more when you're in competition. Markku [Alen] used to say: "Testing is testing, rally is rally," and he's absolutely right. There are things which will happen here, be it on the road section, the checking-in procedure, somewhere; there's something about putting the numbers on the doors and doing a rally. It's always the same, you always end up saying: "How come we've done so many thousand kilometres of testing and had nothing and we've come to this event and this has happened."

Q. That testing does seem to have gone very well.

DL: Somebody asked me to describe the most remarkable thing about the test and my answer was that it was remarkably unremarkable. It hasn't been perfect, but the things we've had to address have been small and routine, the things you expect. There are components where we knew we were sailing close to the wind. You were at the test where we bent some suspension components in Sardinia, we'd seen what we could get away with, we then went back to Banbury, to the design office and told them to put the deign target up by 10 per cent. That was done and we haven't bent one of those since.

Q. You've designed and developed a lot of rally cars in your time, is this the most trouble-free test period you've known with a car?

DL: I think so, yes. Considering how new the car is, I'd have to say yes, it's been very, very good.

Q. Does this mean you've missed a trick on performance or are you that confident in the car?

DL: The only question mark now is, have we set our targets high enough? We feel we have, the feedback from the drivers is positive , it all feels like it's working like it should.

Q. What is the target for the car's debut?

DL: We hope to show we're competitive.

Q. What's competitive?

DL: On the pace.

Q. Is that a podium then?

DL: It's too early to say, because of the huge unknown - the testing has gone really well, we've met all of our targets and we think we're where we wanted to be - but you know what it's like, we've got no benchmarks. I don't want to make a prediction, but the object of the exercise is to take a car to Sardinia that is at that level.

Q. How much more is there to come from the car?

DL: We haven't used up all of our ammunition, but we've got to the stage in development where we have to decide when to consolidate and prepare for Sardinia. We think we've stopped [development] at the right moment, but if we get to Sardinia and we're a tenth or two off the pace we're not going to go around the back and shoot ourselves. If we're a second off the pace, there will be some long faces. The target, if it's the right one, we should be very, very close to Ford and Citroen.

Q. Given the technical parameters, is it difficult to be that far away?

DL: For an experienced team, yes that's a fair comment. Obviously, you could get it wrong, but I think there's not enough freedom in the regulations to do anything completely crazy. The difference between the best car and the others will be a combination of many, many things, like 100 details - there won't be any magic ingredients. The best car will need the best engine, the lightest chassis, the best aero, the best handling, dampers and driver and so on, that'll be the difference.

Q. When you watched Sweden and Mexico, what did you think?

DL: The same as what the other guys have said. Sweden and Mexico are special in their own way. You can pick out bits of what the drivers have said, but there's nothing I would draw any real conclusions from. This [Portugal] is the first event which is not exceptional, it's representative. It's a middle of the road event, not the roughest, smoothest, fastest or slowest, highest or lowest. We'll know more after this event.

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