Every time I was watching Mads past weekend, I was once again amazed how rough and aggressive his driving style is in comparison to most other drivers. It's the same style he was driving the Fords past couple of seasons. All arms and elbows without much finesse, looking out of the side window in every second corner. Exciting to watch, but you can just feel the last seconds escaping him at the same time. Not sure if that style is the best for C3 or any other modern rally car for that matter, but I think especially the "racing car" Citroen would probably demand a completely different driving approach. I think both Meeke and Breen have a much more refined and suitable driving style for the car. Though funny enough, when you throw the car around like Mads (if you still maintain a good concentration and accuracy in driving otherwise), it is actually often a bit safer style to drive as you get a bit more time to react to surprise moments than if you try to do maximum attack completely racing style. Maybe Östberg's driving style is one reason for his great consistency record. Of the drivers in the recent past Mikko Hirvonen had a bit similar old school style and he also had a great finishing record. But especially towards the end of his career he also started to struggle a lot in terms of pace.

In contrast, whilst Meeke has a great driving style for C3, his problems are in consistency. With Meeke's style the concentration has to be even greater as the margin for error becomes smaller. And like I said elsewhere, I think his pacenotes are probably the underlying issue for most of his problems. I remember Petter Solberg had this exact same problem. He had a great modern driving style, even more nose-first than Loeb, but to execute it successfully he put more and more things and accuracy into his pacenotes, in the end way too much in my opinion. And then in the end everything is just way too much on the knife edge all the time. Your brain can't keep up consistently anymore for the whole 300-400 stage kilometres.

If Colin McRae and Richard Burns were able to drive 2018 WRC cars, using the same driving style than they had in their days, I think Burns would do great and McRae would struggle similarly like Mads does. Or if Walter Röhrl was born 40 years later I think he would completely dominate the modern WRC. You just have to be so smooth and clean these days and also find the right balance and ingredients which allow you to execute that style consistently.