Rally Sweden 2013

[Georgi]

Congratulations to Al-Rajhi! Great performance in snow!

This guy is AMAZING! Fast and reliable! Don't know his speed on tarmac but I guess it's ok.

[Iskald]

Good performance from Al-Rajhi, but amazing? His closest rival Grøndal drove a Gr.N car, the rest of the guys in WRC2 were absolutely nowhere. Brynildsen had to withdraw, but I'm sure would have caught Al-Rahji even with his 1 min 40 secs penalty. Its fun to se Al-Rajhi win, but I'm more impressed by Grøndal who managed to keep him behind for such a long time with an inferior car.

[Mirek]

Am I the only one who thinks that splits should not be allowed in the car?
Ogier saw Loebs splits and therfore backed off, boooring!!

That was discussed to death in many threads. It would be nice but it's technically impossible to prevent any kind of getting splits in car. Even in IRC where they were not allowed teams always managed to find a way to inform their drivers at least in some occasions.

[rallye-vid]

Yazeed's last year Sweden performance wasn't that good. He improved a lot.

[Mirek]

Correct me if i´m wrong but isn´t this Citroens final year in WRC?

Now comes the downside - I firmly believe Seb Loeb entered the first two rallies to see how a) fast, b) unreliable or c) how slow VW is? Now that Seb Ogier with a second in monte and first in Sweden has proven how good they are I wonder if Citroen board will hasten the move to WTCC soon?
I cant see Citroen stay around to see Seb Ogier and VW dominate :-(

So far it looked like PSA wanted to stay, just maybe to switch back to Peugeot after Loeb retires but it's sure possible they leave when they see VW as too tough opponent (like they did in IRC). Anyway my hope is that they could be too proud to loose to Germans. Let's see

[MJW]

So far it looked like PSA wanted to stay, just maybe to switch back to Peugeot after Loeb retires but it's sure possible they leave when they see VW as too tough opponent (like they did in IRC). Anyway my hope is that they could be too proud to loose to Germans. Let's see

Citroen and Peugeot operate out of the same competitions dept, the staff even share an @mpsa email address. My guess it will be a re-branding, Citroen to WTCC with some new fangled hybrid 'creative technologie' logo and Peugoet back to WRC. Maybe I am reading too much into it but Peugeot now have the 1980's 205T16 colours on their rallycars, Audi (VW) vs Peugeot again? yes please :-)

[Rallying UK]

This is the moment Volkswagen Motorsport knew that Sébastien Ogier had won Rally Sweden - giving them their first WRC win in the Polo R WRC. Director of VW Motorsport, Jost Capito, is interviewed by SVT Sport in this audio clip: boo.fm/b1204208

[MikeD]

And you forgot to mention the swedish speaking group of finnish people which not has to be forgotten making Sweden and Finland maybe the most important brotherhoods of people after Sweden and Norway...

How about that IPSOS survey Aftenposten made, that showed that 68% of the Swedes in Skåne would like Skåne to be Danish again?

But apart from that then I agree that Sweden and Norway is more close whereas about 50% of the Danes looks towards Germany and UK af their brotherhood people.

Anyway, wrong thread - gonna kill this subject now

[RAS007]

Congrats to Ogier.

For me main question is if Seb will change his mind?

I really hope so. This is the first real competition he has faced in years.

[MikeD]

Citroen and Peugeot operate out of the same competitions dept, the staff even share an @mpsa email address. My guess it will be a re-branding, Citroen to WTCC with some new fangled hybrid 'creative technologie' logo and Peugoet back to WRC. Maybe I am reading too much into it but Peugeot now have the 1980's 205T16 colours on their rallycars, Audi (VW) vs Peugeot again? yes please :-)

The problem is that PSA is negotiating staff lay-offs with the French Government, and in France a company isn't allowed to hire and fire like in most other countries (some might remember when the French socialist Government in the 80'ies dictated everything in Renault as what can only be described as a hostile take-over). When it came out that PSA was to fire more than twice the expected in France itself, I can guarentee you that the French government wouldn't allow PSA to expand motorsport at the same time they lay off that amount of people. That's why Peugeot withdrew from WEC even beore it started in 2012 despite having agreed a full season with FIA. In other words there won't both be Citroën in WTCC and Peugeot in WRC at the same time - they simply wont be allowed even if they liked to.