DMACK Searching For Sweden Success With World Rally Car Teams

You don’t expect a rally tyre to win on it’s very first event but that’s what happened at last year’s Rally Sweden when DMACK’s winter snow tyre took victory in the Production WRC support category. Next week, DMACK is hoping to emulate that success and, with a year’s worth of development under its belt, will tackle the 2012 Rally Sweden with a sense of confidence and well-earned optimism.

When the second round of the 2012 FIA World Rally Championship kicks off from Karlstad on Thursday evening, DMACK will have its tyres fitted to at least two world rally cars piloted by a pair of exciting young Scandinavian drivers.

Finn Jari Ketomaa, a three-time national rally champion, will tackle five rounds of this year’s series in a full-branded DMACK Ford Fiesta RS WRC world rally car starting off with Sweden. He will be joined by Norwegian Eyvind Brynildsen, also in a Fiesta, who partners Mads Ostberg in the Adapta rally team.

Even though DMACK’s DMG-ICE proved its speed last year, the company has made some extensive changes to ensure even greater performance next week. The uprated winter tyre benefits from a 15% increase in construction and compound stiffness while an increase in stud protrusion will help to give even more grip on the snow and ice covered stages.

Every DMACK tyre has 384 metal pin studs. Each stud is 20mm long with 7mm of the stud protruding – an increase from 6.5mm last year.

The impressive grip and traction delivered by the DMG-ICE ensures speeds on the only true snow rally of the season are seriously high. Drivers will lean on the roadside snow backs to help steer their cars around the corner and Scandinavian drivers are seldom beaten on this very specialised event.

DMACK will also supply Norwegian Marius Aasen and Pole Maciej Oleksowicz, both in Ford Fiesta S2000 cars.

Event Details

Based once again at Karlstad, with central servicing at Hagfors Airport, Rally Sweden kicks off with a new Qualifying Stage on Thursday where the fastest drivers win the chance to choose their starting positions. Thursday night’s super special stage starts the rally action at Karlstad’s trotting track before the competition kicks off in earnest on Friday morning.

The opening day’s action takes place almost entirely in Norway with remote service in the town of Kongsvinger. Saturday and Sunday stages remain mostly unchanged from 2011 and the rally finishes back in Karlstad on Sunday afternoon after covering 349km of timed high-speed action.

Dick Cormack, DMACK Tyres motorsport director, said: "After the surprise victory in Sweden last year, we were keen to build on the performance of our winter tyre. Last year was always going to be a learning year for DMACK but now we are starting to revisit events and it’s a chance to show how the tyres are developing. We’ve had some fantastic feedback from pre-event testing and are excited that Jari and Eyvind are both using DMACK on their world rally cars.”