Arnaud Dunand: “I have already switched to Chilean time”

What does this inspire you? rally from Chile?

It's hard to really know what to expect. THE WRC has only happened once in this country so there aren't many points of reference.

Is this your first run this far?

I went to Mexico this year to work with Pierre-Louis Loubet, but Chile will indeed mark my overseas debut.

How did you prepare for this test?

First of all, a few days before departure, I switched to Chilean time.

What do you mean?

I didn't want to get there and be tired during the reconnaissance. So I delayed everything by 5 hours. This made me go to bed very late, but I also got up around 11 o'clock... It was the first time I did that. I'll see if it works. For the test itself, we tried to find as many images as possible. We watched Sébastien's videos Loeb and Seb Ogier, but also those of the national rally of recent years.

Does the route seem complicated to you?

First of all, it's very different from 2019. Friday is really very fast and it's super narrow with a lot of skies. It can remind you of Finland in places. The 2^e day will be more consistent with what we know. The organizers sent us videos and from what we could see, the sweep should be significant. Even if it is very different from a racing camera and will have to be confirmed during reconnaissance, we were able to observe the profile of the roads and the type of car we will need.

Since the rally is new to you and Yohan Rossel, the workload is likely to be significant, right?

We actually don't have any existing notes from this round. We will take them in recce which involves more work in the evening and on my side there will be more editing and copying to have a perfect notebook on the day of the test.

Have you already discussed your objective with your pilot?

Sometimes, rallies outside Europe do not bring together a large field in WRC2, but this will not be the case in Chile. Apart from Andreas Mikkelsen, all our competitors are there. There should therefore be a good fight at the end of which we should score big points.