Q&A: Corrado Provera.

Peugeot followed up its recent Swedish one-two with a hat trick on the Tour of Corsica. With the World Championship poised to continue this weekend on the roads of Catalonia, Corrado Provera [Team Director] looks back at his team's historic exploit on the Mediterranean island.

Q:
Peugeot tasted hat trick glory with the 905 in the 1993 Le Mans 24 Hours. Now it has repeated that feat in world rallying with the 206 WRC. Is it possible to compare the two events?

Corrado Provera:
Yes, they are comparable. At Le Mans I was part of the communications staff. This time, the joy I feel as team director is just as intense as it was then. Obviously, I share this joy with Jean-Pierre Nicolas and everyone at Peugeot Sport. They all have good reason to be proud. Seeing the podium monopolised by Peugeot's colours and hearing the French national anthem ring out twice - once for the team and then for the winning crew - was an exceptionally emotional moment. In addition to our collective joy, there is something magical, something complete about the figure three. Like our hat trick at Le Mans in 1993, or the French football team's 3-0 win in the final of the 1998 World Cup, a hat trick is always something that marks both the public and the media. Peugeot is present in world class rallying to promote its sporting, dynamic and technological image. The reward for our result in Corsica is therefore threefold.

Q:
Your success in Corsica was helped by the fact that the three 206 WRCs were competitive and totally reliable...

CP:
The same goes for our three crews. They won without making the slightest mistake. Indeed, the two go hand in hand. It's because their cars were competitive and easy to drive that they were able to push so hard without surpassing their limits. Some of their rivals weren't so fortunate. Gilles Panizzi did more than justify his reputation as asphalt king. He proved unbeatable whatever the weather conditions. In fact he was even more impressive in the rain than on the dry. He carried out a large proportion of our pre-event testing himself and was totally at one with his car. Meanwhile, Marcus Gr?nholm marked yet another step forward. We already knew he was extremely quick on asphalt but he sometimes paid for his generous style. In Corsica, he proved that we can now count on his exceptional skills whatever the type of surface. Finally, on only his third outing in Peugeot colours, Richard Burns upped his act even further. He fended off [Tommi] M?kinen and then firmly defended third place, transforming our success into a triumph. A fantastic piece of teamwork.

Q:
The 2002 Peugeot Sport team effectively appears to be functioning in particular unison ...

CP:
This has come with time, forged by our successes as well as by the tougher moments. I mention the latter because, as I have often underlined, our team is still relatively young in the world context. Slowly but surely, we have become more and more composed as we have gained experience. If Didier Auriol is no longer with us today, it is because our ideas concerning work methods differed. However, we cannot forget the enormous contribution he made to the team. There's still a part of him in our current run, just as there's a part of all those who have been involved in the 206 WRC adventure. Today, we are harvesting what has been sown over a number of seasons. The victories help of course, but the team is now particularly bonded; and we enjoy working together more and more.

Q:
You currently lead both the Manufacturers' and Drivers' championships with a significantly higher points score than at the same time last year...

CP:
We clearly weren't so well placed at the start of the 2001 season, nor at the start of 2000 for that matter. Our objective this year was effectively to get off to a better start. And that's how it's turned out. But there's a certain logic to our results. In Sweden, where a non-Scandinavian has yet to win, we benefited from the services of two fantastic Finns in a car that has never been beaten there. The Monte Carlo Rally and especially the Tour of Corsica are asphalt events where French teams have traditionally gone well. Our engineers naturally excel on this type of surface. Moreover, on ice and asphalt alike, the tyres supplied by Michelin have been of a very high quality and have played their part in our success. To my mind, the way the season has started is therefore perfectly coherent. We can effectively be proud of what we have achieved, but there is no cause to be triumphant. A set-up problem meant we were not competitive on the Monte Carlo Rally. Hard work enabled us to correct that in time for Corsica but we might found ourselves suffering again in Catalonia, or on any of the other events to come. Nobody is infallible...

Q:
Even so, some observers already believe you are on target for a third world title...

CP:
That is effectively a tremendous challenge but the season has only just begun. It's not because we have just scored two resounding results that we are sure to win all the time. We are perfectly aware of the level of our rivals and we have no doubt that they will be doing everything in their power to turn the tables. There are other rallies like Cyprus, Greece and Kenya where it will be up to us to put in a big effort in our bid to win on terrains that have so far been less kind to us. The World Rally Championship is too complex, too difficult and too diversified for us to imagine for a second that anything can be a foregone conclusion...