Mills: Citroen C4 will be a winner.

by Rob Wilkins

Subaru's Phil Mills has said that he will be surprised if the 'new' Citroen C4 isn't capable of winning straight away, when it replaces the Xsara WRC.

Citroen will return to the FIA World Rally Championship in an official capacity next season, after taking a sabbatical of sorts this season and entrusting Kronos Racing with running the Xsara WRC for Sebastien Loeb and Xavier Pons and Daniel Sordo. Like BP Ford team leader, Marcus Gronholm then, who Crash.net Radio spoke to last week, Mills doesn't expect the change over to the C4 to affect the competitiveness of the French manufacturer or current 'man of the moment', Loeb.

"Of course [the C4 will be good when it appears in the WRC]," Petter Solberg's Welsh co-pilot told Crash.net Radio, when asked about 2007. "They have been testing that car for nearly two years now. I am sure they will deny that fact, but it has been two years since it was first built. They do an awful lot of testing compared to the other teams' and they never seem to stand still. I would be very surprised if they didn't turn up and it wasn't in a winning position.

"They have got there existing car, which they can do back-to-back tests with. They know exactly where they are. They have an event winning car now and all they have to do is back-to-back tests with that. So they will know exactly where they are and they will know when to launch the car, whether it is at the end of this season or the start of next year. So as I said, I think everybody would be very, very surprised if it is not a car capable of winning - so yeah they are a major threat."

As for BP Ford, Mills knows they will be right up there too: "They are doing a superb job and they have a very competitive car now. Mikko [Hirvonen] and Marcus [Gronholm] are two exceptional drivers' and they are doing an exceptionally good job. It's a tough job to beat them all," concluded the Welshman, who won the title with Solberg in 2003.