Turin based engineer Mario Fornaris has been working as consultant to Skoda Motorsport in the development of the Fabia Super 2000 since its inception but was first seen in public wearing his Skoda colours at Rallye Monte-Carlo. He had long been involved in rally sport, notably in the nineties when he was a test and development engineer for Peugeot, then later when he was given the responsibility for developing Mitsubishi's Lancer World Rally Car. Monte Carlo 2009 was a spectacular debut for the Skoda. Juho Hanninen's car led the rally for half of the event. Both Juho and teammate Jan Kopecky scored fastest stage times on a notoriously tricky event, and the only significant technical difficulty was a power steering problem for Jan on the first day which cost him around four minutes. Juho had to retire when he went off the road on the final day, and Jan finished fourth a lot less than four minutes behind the eventual rally winner. All this came exactly ten years after the company's embarrassing entry into the world of the World Rally Car, at Monte Carlo in 1999... Now Mario can speak about the latest stage in his career!

... I have been working on the Skoda Fabia S2000 project for around 30 months, a big challenge. The interesting point for me was that although this was like the Mitsubishi a completely new project, I had a new way of working. Before the Fabia project got off the ground, we had time to think carefully about how to go about the work. We spent some months deciding the best way to go about the project. Then we started to work as usual.

... The Skoda project was a very different project. With the Lancer work it was not just a clean sheet of paper technically, we also had to build up an engineering team which for various reasons did not exist at that time. And with the Mitsubishi we only had twelve months or so before the new car had to be running on the rallies. In that time frame we had to check out the software systems, look for the right people and design and build the car as well! The Skoda project was completely different. When M Hrabanek came to be head of Skoda Motorsport, the team was already in place, I knew exactly who the key people were and what were their responsibilities.

... Philosophies as well as the cars have moved on in the past few years while the various manufacturers have been developing their Super 2000 cars. I do not think the technology has changed very much since the first Super 2000 cars were produced in 2005, but it is always an advantage to have the chance to follow other people. and notice ho they overcome are the problems you might also face. In the beginning of Super 2000 work, I guess that the engineers and designers did not believe it would be possible to design a nice car up to World Rally Car standards and still stay within the required budgets. The people who came before us showed that this was possible without using the exotic and expensive materials which the World Rally Cars have.

... The Super 2000 regulations which concern the chassis are quite close to the regulations for World Rally Cars, except that in Super 2000 you have the restrictions about maximum costs of the car. The challenge now was to prepare a car that is as close as possible to a factory World Rally Car but keeping it within the cost limits and thereby make the car cheap enough to be able to sell to customers. Patrik Sandell is the only customer which we have firmed up at the moment, but to be fair Skoda Motorsport was very focussed on preparing for Monte Carlo 2009. How the team performed on that event was a key point, it meant so much - new car, new team, the most famous rally, Skoda's return and so on. The commercial side of the Super 2000 project has not really started yet but it was necessary to get Sandell's programme off the ground because Norway was such a special rally for him. Now Monte Carlo is over, I imagine the commercial department will concentrate on the other customer projects as well and decide which strategies are our priorities. For the first year, of course, Skoda's first priority is to show that the car is capable of performing well.

... Because of the regulations and the fact that the car is not so expensive as the World Rally Cars, there is a different scenario in the Super 2000 programme for Skoda. Good privateers and importers have the chance to run the same specification as the works cars and have a chance to succeed at very high level. This means that success is down to what actually happens on the rallies. Looking at the entry list for Monte Carlo, there were certainly ten drivers who could expect to be able to win the rally, something completely different from the present day World Rally Championship! The winning factors therefore are having a good team, making good choices during the event and having good drivers.

3mmm