Quote Originally Posted by Rally Power View Post
The C3 gravel improvement was already noticed in Catalunya and Australia. Since Christophe Besse arrival, in August, the team has managed to understand how to improve the car; till then they were all, including Meeke, clueless.
Not totally true. There are facts out in the open and it's not difficult to see why things went wrong, unless you're an ostrich.

It's been admitted by Matton on many occasions that the risks the team took in engineering and development backfired. He held his hands up. You then had quotes from the new tech chief Besse, saying that individuals within the team found it difficult to admit to their mistakes (some have now left or been sacked), until the penny finally dropped after Mikkelsen and then Loeb said the exact same things about the car as the regular drivers. Changes were only then implemented which the regular drivers had been pushing for for months prior.

After the midpoint of last season, certain Citroen staff "moved on", and the man who designed and penned the car was replaced. Meeke's position was also strengthened (despite a spate of crashes), and with the team all on the same page and working together properly, Citroen have moved forward and the development has been good. Besse has been a great appointment as technical director and the improvements are there to seen. Loeb's recent interview further emphasises that (the article on the WRC website. Not the interview just uploaded on the WRC YouTube channel, where Loeb talks about the difficulties of the car before the changes in the second half of last season).

Looking at all that, it seems Citroen ballsed up not taking the testing feedback on-board earlier, which either suggests arrogance and stubbornness (Besse's quotes suggest that could've been the case), or a lack of trust in Meeke, Breen and Lefebrve's feedback on the car. Or maybe a bit of both? However if they didn't trust the feedback from those drivers from the start, they should've let other drivers help test and develop the car in 2016. Yet we know that wasn't the case, as despite Meeke saying he wanted Loeb or another experienced driver to test the car, nobody did (until Loeb in 2017). Why not? Ask Matton.

You look at VW testing this Polo R5, they have Depping, Tiedemand, Gronholm and now Solberg all in the car. Vastly different drivers all with different experience, but you can bet all their individual feedback is being analysed and taken on-board properly, with changes and tweaks made accordingly. Citroen could've tapped into drivers like Loeb and Carlos Sainz's knowledge and experience in 2016, and it was a huge oversight not doing so. Instead of being proactive, the team were reactive to bad results which meant Loeb only tested the car in August/September of 2017 (when it should have been August 2016). If Loeb tested the car before 2017, he would've said the same things about it as he did almost a year later, and the same things as Meeke, Breen, Lefebrve and Mikkelsen all said before him.
So that's where you're wrong about Meeke and the other drivers being clueless, they all new the areas which needed improved. That's just a fact.

But the main thing is, since Besse's appointment and the realisation from within the team that things needed changed on the car, we now have a more competitive and drivable car on most terrains. Further improvements are in the offing too in Argentina, which will hopefully help increase performance further. Better late than never, and at least Citroen eventually realised their mistakes and took action with changes within the team.

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