Ostberg fastest on new private Ford's debut

Ostberg missed last month's season opener in Monte Carlo, spending the time sorting out his own team for the 2017 series.

He and Martin Prokop had originally planned to run Volkswagen Polo R WRCs, with Sebastien Ogier as a team-mate, but when that fell through the decision was taken to return to a privately run Ford.

Despite only testing the car for the first time last weekend, Ostberg was quickest o the 4.49-mile shakedown stage, edging Citroen C3 WRC debutant Craig Breen by a tenth of a second.

"After only two days in the car, I'm very, very happy," Ostberg told Autosport.

"I'm not sure how representative this stage will be - Sebastien and Ott [Tanak] were not pushing so hard - but still you have to drive fast to be the fastest driver."

Ostberg has a strong record in Sweden, having finished on the podium in five of the last six years.

He played down any suggestion that his shakedown pace made him a victory contender.

"I don't know about that," he said, "but we have a very good starting position and we have to use this and take the maximum advantage.

"What I will say is that I have a fantastic feeling with this team - I wanted to be back in my own team and it's really nice to be doing that."

Ostberg paid tribute to the speed with which the Onebet Jipocar World Rally Team had put everything together.

"It's been a quite stressful but, together with M-Sport, the team has built and brought to Norway a brand new World Rally Car in eight days - that's an incredible achievement.

"We have a good group of guys around us here. It's nice feeling right now."

Second-fastest man Breen was also making a debut, as he has moved into Citroen's 2017-specification car for Sweden after taking the ageing DS 3 to fifth in Monte Carlo.

Hyundai driver Hayden Paddon was third, four tenths of a second behind Breen and 0.5s off Ostberg's time.

The New Zealander was back competing in an i20 WRC for the first time since the accident on the opening stage of Monte Carlo in which a spectator died.

Breen's team-mate Kris Meeke was the fourth driver within a second of fastest time.

There were two approaches shakedown; with the tyres used coming out of the team's rally allocation, some drivers - notably Tanak and Ogier, who were ninth and 17th - elected to take a conservative approach to look after the studded covers in case they need to use them on the rally proper later.

Rally Sweden starts from Karlstad on Thursday evening.