Building on a strong rally season last year with a wide program of events, and excellent results such as victory on the fifth Junior World Championship round, the Rallye Sanremo with Mirco Baldacci driving, or Leon Pesticcio's fight to the death for the Super1600 title on British Rally Championship, the crack Italian Hi-Tec squad is preparing to face the new season.

This year the programmes are more ambitious and will push the Fabrizio Borra led team upwards. The key program will be the Junior World Rally Championship, and once again, the team will run with Fiat's Punto Abarth rally cars.

Highly acclaimed Spanish youngster Xavier Pons will be joined by the talented Italian Alessandro Broccoli. Both the drivers will start the Junior championship campaign facing former Hi-tec driver Mirco Baldacci, who has now signed for the Japanese Suzuki outfit.

Emerging star Leon Pesticcio will be thrown into the highly competitive Italian Rally Championship, after impressing the Hi-Tec team last year with a string of excellent results in the British Rally Championship. The Welsh junior driver is being groomed for a World Championship program in 2005.

On the English gravel, Hi-Tec will enter the young Finnish star Ville Pertti Teuronen. The new Fiat Stilo Trophy UK, heavily pushed for by Fabrizio Borra, has been given the green light and will see around eight to ten drivers challenge for the trophy over the seven rounds of the British Championship. With the same car, but in the Italian version of the trophy, Andrea Perego will be run by the team, the youngster joining the promotional trophy of the Fiat brand after intermittent outings in an Opel Corsa Super1600. The Lombard driver has signed a three year contract with Hi-Tec, a long program, which aims to bring him step by step up to the Junior World Rally Championship.

This year, Hi-Tec will again bet on youngsters and, taking into account the history of the past years, with several young pilots moving on to claim works seats, the Cuneo based team are looking forward to see the start of the current season.