With a fifth overall place at the conclusion of Rally Sweden last weekend, 18-year-old Andreas Mikkelsen not only accomplished an outstanding result, he also made history by becoming the youngest driver to score championship points in a WRC event when he beat Matthew Wilson's previous record of eighth in Argentina at the age of 19.

Aboard their Ford Focus WRC, Mikkelsen and co-driver Ola Fløene also improved greatly on their previous best in the World Rally Championship, which was a ninth position at Rally Ireland last November. The pair had therefore come close to scoring points on that occasion as well.

"We had a positive shakedown and the car felt great," Andreas Mikkelsen reported. "On the way to the start of the first stage on Friday morning though, there was something wrong with a turbo valve and we were more or less without turbo all of Leg 1. I must thank the Ramsport mechanics who had such a lot to do on Friday night: how they managed to do it all was just incredible. They've done a great job all weekend."

"On Saturday the car was working 100% and I also drove well so everything worked," he continued. "We set some really good stage times and made up for some of the time lost on Friday, climbing a few places."

Coincidentally, Mikkelsen was fighting against the previous record-holder over the week-end: "Today (Sunday) we had a great fight with Matthew (Wilson) and it was too bad he went off because it was a good battle and as well as being sad for him, I would have preferred to have fought to the end!"

"When we saw he had retired we just turned down our pace and concentrated on improving our pace notes for returning here in 2010," the young Norwegian said.

Andreas Mikkelsen's next rally event will be Rally Finnskog, a round in the Norwegian Rally Championship which takes place on 16 February. The rally is located in the same region as the Rally Norway WRC round.