Citroen WRT

[AnttiL]

https://twitter.com/Yves_Matton/stat...08637656829952

[Eli]

https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/1...ally-catalunya

[macebig]

Seriously now, Wales is probably the end of the road for Meeke. If he does well there, he may continue in 2018.If not, I feel he is done.

[mknight]

https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/1...ally-catalunya

Matton is actually defending both Meeke's SS crash (by saying the stage was bad) and also subsequent slow speed on Friday.

This part was interesting:

Citroen benched the Northern Irishman for Rally Poland at the end of June and he has subsequently struggled to replicate the form that helped him win Rally Mexico and dominate in Corsica earlier in the season.

This is the only place it is mentioned in the whole article why his place for Catalunya might be in danger. Not a single word about what happened before and caused the first benching. Instead unless you followed the season closely you get the idea that the benching alone caused him to loose form afterwards.

Not hard to see why people talk about british jurno bias.

[seb_sh]

Not hard to see why people talk about british jurno bias.

The articles from motorsport news and autosport are written by David Evans who for me is infamous for having a very let's say interesting mix of facts and opinions and speculation in his articles, not to mention always drops one or two controversial details in there or puts some semi clickbaity title. I'm sure he knows better but he needs those views, David Evans gotta eat.

[Francis44]

Some noise on Twitter that Carlos Tavares himself (CEO PSA group) will choose the team manager and drivers for 2018 soon. Matton might be out.

[seb_sh]

Some noise on Twitter that Carlos Tavares himself (CEO PSA group) will choose the team manager and drivers for 2018 soon. Matton might be out.

The best decision is probably to change Matton, while the blame for the situation is not just down to him, the list of mistakes he seems to have made is quite long:
- relying too much on just Meeke for C3 development
- not jumping to get one of the VW drivers
- starting with Lefebvre as a full season driver
- mixed signals to the press; maybe also conflicting orders to the drivers
- seemingly chaotic handling of the lineup mid season

The team needs a shakeup to change the way of handling things, a good place to start is with Matton.

[mknight]

The best decision is probably to change Matton, while the blame for the situation is not just down to him, the list of mistakes he seems to have made is quite long:
- relying too much on just Meeke for C3 development
- not jumping to get one of the VW drivers
- starting with Lefebvre as a full season driver
- mixed signals to the press; maybe also conflicting orders to the drivers
- seemingly chaotic handling of the lineup mid season

The team needs a shakeup to change the way of handling things, a good place to start is with Matton.

Highlighted the main issues for me

- when the only experienced driver developing the car is Meeke they should at least listen to him (which Meeke claims they didn't), if they don't believe him then get someone else experienced for an opinion. Note that even Hyundai did 1 day test with Mikkelsen for feedback on the car.

- so much the second point, to quote Breen I sound like a broken record but Mattons "arrogant" quote where he said he was not interested in Latvala or Mikkelsen in December really has to go down in history.

- Lefevbre actually did ok last year showing signs of speed, rather similar to this year's impression of Suninen tbh. Prbly the crash in Germany also had negative effect. So letting Lefebvre drive wasn't so bad, letting him drive instead of hiring one of the VW guys was. Also they had so many rallies including one in Belgium? to pick one of them, yet they kept going with 2 young drivers. Could have put Lefevbre in R5 for a season, but problem is they don't have an R5 that can compete with Fabia or Fiesta.

- yep the pre-event press for Finland was most telling. In one sentence he says Meeke should bring back info to engineers (finish) and in next he says that everything below podium was bad, similar in other situations. For example publicly announcing after Corsica that Meeke should just go for rally wins did imo contribute to his crashing spree.

- partly agree, when he finally started to handle he could have outlined some plan for 3-4 rallies ahead for all drivers. That said we have no idea about contracts and money situation.

[Simmi]

I do think Matton could be bang in trouble - for a number of the reasons listed above.

If VW had pulled out of the sport, or at least hinted it, a couple of weeks earlier then Citroen probably aren't in this situation. As it was Matton ended up signing two inexperienced drivers to medium-term contracts. I don't think Citroen have the budget of (Hyundai/Toyota) so it's not a great idea for them to be paying Latvala for example, and then trying to either pay out a contract of Lefebvre/Breen, or find them other drives. Hence why he said only Ogier (a proven champion) was potentially worth that trouble.

[dimviii]

AnttiL‏*@AnttiL_WRC
If #WRC rallies lasted only for the first non SSS stage, Kris Meeke would still lead despite not scoring in Germany https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...ubhtml*…