Sołowow has been driving the Grande Punto Abarth this year on the FIA European Rally Championship, run as usual by his Cersanit Rally Team, which helped him to secure fourth place overall in the premier European series.

A second Grande Punto Abarth is expected to tackle the Wales Rally GB at the end of the month (29 Nov - 2 Dec) with news that Polish privateer Michal Sołowow plans to run his S2000 car on the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) counting event in place of the Mitsubishi Evo IX he had provisionally entered.

Sołowow has been driving the Grande Punto Abarth this year on the FIA European Rally Championship (ERC), run as usual by his Cersanit Rally Team, which helped him to secure fourth place overall in the premier European series after he finished fourth on last month's Rally d'Antibes Cote d'Azur. Sołowow, who has been rallying since 2001, also contested the Polish Rally Championship this year in a Mitsubishi Evo IX and was provisionally set to enter this car on the British round of the FIA World Rally Championship later this month.

From Kielce in Poland, Sołowow, who was born in 1962, has been rallying seriously for the last six years, the last four with co-driver Maciej Baran alongside. After making his rally debut on the Krakow Rally in 2001 in a Mitsubishi Evo V, Sołowow was placed 7th overall (4th in Group N) in the final Polish Rally Championship standings a year later. In 2003 he was 6th (4th in Group N) in his home series, while in 2004, he improved his final ranking to third overall. At the same time, he was busy developing overseas ambitions, contesting the FIA ERC in 2004 where he finished the series in fourth place, a feat he repeated this year with the Grande Punto Abarth.

Standing him in good stead for the rigors of the Wales Rally GB, which gets underway in 21 days time, the experienced Pole contested last year’s event in a Mitsubishi Evo IX, finishing 16th in Group N. Further experience on the world stage comes from five appearances on the Swedish Rally (2003-07), plus one-off outings on the Cyprus (2003) and Deutschland (2003) rallies.

The Wales Rally GB is one of the WRC’s toughest events and for this year a number of changes have been made to the cloverleaf format. New for 2007, the Service Park has moved from Felindre to SA1, at the marina in Swansea, close to the town centre, providing a more easily accessible location for spectators. Following the format of Rally Automobile Monte Carlo, the event will run two stages in the darkness both Friday and Saturday, as the last stage of the leg. Cardiff will continue as Host City, staging the Ceremonial Start and the Finish, both at a new location near City Hall. The fan-friendly Millennium Stadium Superspecial stage in Cardiff (host to numerous national soccer and rugby finals and internationals) makes another appearance at the event on Saturday, providing a spectacular centrepiece for the rally. Both Cardiff and nearby Swansea are thriving metropolitan areas that have undergone considerable facelifts in recent years, and now have unique cosmopolitan personalities to match the best in Europe. From here, the cars head out into the hills and forests of southern Wales for the competitive action.