English

After the Dakar experience of Peter van Merksteijn, the Dutch rally team of Van Merksteijn Motorsport is preparing for the new season with the start of the WRC Rally Norway. Van Merksteijn Motorsport has entered both of their Ford Focus WRC for father and son Peter van Merksteijn in the winter rally around Hamar which will be driven from February 13^th until the 15^th.

As a final preparation for the rally, the team held a test session in Finnskogen on Monday to setup the cars for the snow covered and frozen forest stages and for some extra practice in driving with the narrow Pirelli spike tyres. In contrast with last year's WRC Swedish Rally, the stages are frozen solid and are covered with a thick layer of snow.\

The WRC Rally Norway will officially start on Thursday night with a spectator special stage in the capital city of Oslo where 2 cars will start at the same time on the 1.92km stage before returning to rally city of Hamar. Both on Friday and Saturday, 8 special stages have to be driven, first to the south of Hamar near Kongsvinger and on Saturday 3 stages north of the city and twice a short stage through the park inside the host city of Hamar. For Sunday the final 6 stages are planned after which the cars will be back in Hamar around 15:00 hours for the finish of the only snow rally on this years WRC calendar.

The service park for the WRC Rally Norway will be on the parking area and inside the Vikingship, the Olympic skating arena where last weekend fellow Dutchman Sven Kramer took the World Championship Allround for the third consecutive time. Within one day the indoor skating ring has made room for the trucks and cars of the factory teams who will service the rally cars inside the arena.