Healthy Serving of Turkey for Stobart

Matthew Wilson and Scott Martin finished in seventh position after a brutally tough fourth round of the FIA World Rally Championship in Turkey.

The young Cumbrian duo and team-mates, Henning Solberg/Ilka Minor, were forced to deal with extremely rocky road conditions and a mixture of gravel and tarmac surfaces.

Thousands of enthusiastic fans flocked to the historical Sultanahment Square in the heart of Istanbul on Thursday evening to watch the ceremonial start of the sixth Rally Turkey. Several Turkish Government officials including the State Minister for Sport, Faruk Nafiz Ozak, were in attendance before the WRC drivers returned by ferry across the Bosphorus Strait to Rally HQ in Pendik.

The newly located event based in the Asian side of Istanbul included 321km of competitive stage distance over 21 tests. The special stages were very fast, wide and rough - but the predominantly gravel route also contained almost 50km of asphalt and meant that the Stobart M-Sport Ford team was forced to use various tyre changing options to find the best strategy to deal with the difficulty of driving on different surfaces.

Read the full event report and hear what the drivers' had to say: Stobart M-Sport Ford Rally of Turkey