RALLY ace Osian Pryce will start a new chapter in his motorsport career when he tackles a Tarmac round of the World Rally Championship for the first time.

A regular winner of asphalt rounds of Britain’s premier rally series, the Machynlleth driver is looking to carry that speed and skill to the world stage at ADAC Rallye Deutschland, the latest round of the Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy, which will start from Trier on Thursday, 18 August.

Pryce and co-driver Dale Furniss had tested a Ford Fiesta R2T, which is identical to the one they will use. They completed 50 kilometres in the MH Motorsport-prepared car at a test venue in Wales.

“The test was really useful,” said Pryce. “We made a stage which would be quite representative of the roads in Baumholder; we got the car up to fourth-gear, then created a junction to slow us right down, and I worked really hard on keeping the car neat and tidy with no corner cutting.

“We worked on the set-up of the car with Mick [Harris, MH Motorsport owner], tweaking the brake bias and things like that. Probably the best thing though, was what we could do with the tyres. We ran the wet in the dry, to see what we could expect and then we did some endurance running on the dry pattern tyre.

“I’m really happy with what we found, the tyres will suit me really well. Best of all, we came away from the test with a plan for the tyre strategy. We have a very clear idea of what we’re going to do.

“Given that I’ve never been to the event before, the test gave me good confidence. Dale has done Germany a couple of times, so we’ll be relying on him a little bit more this time – but we’ve also had great support from Phil Pugh, who has tasted success on this rally co-driving for Elfyn (Evans). Phil’s been through the onboards with us and given us a real good insight into what to expect in Germany.”

The next two rallies in Germany and Spain represent the final two scoring opportunities in the Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy. It’s a clean sheet, with the driver scoring the most points over the next two rallies, taking another two World Rally Championship prize-drives next season.

“That makes the strategy very straightforward for us next week,” said Pryce. “We’ll be pushing as hard as we can from the very start to try and score stage wins and bag as many points as we can.

“This might be my first Tarmac round of the world championship, but I’m just as happy driving on asphalt as I am on the loose. I think it came as a bit of a surprise for a few people when we won our first BRC round on Tarmac, but for me, a stage is a stage regardless of the surface.”

Germany’s round of the World Rally Championship provides three distinct challenges, the vineyards, the military area and the countryside stages, with the grip level in each of those changing considerably with the weather conditions.