Rally Guanajuato Mexico 2013

[Fast Eddie WRC]

2013 World Rally Championship leader Sébastien Ogier says he's unhappy with his Qualifying performance for Rally Mexico in which he finished fifth overall in his Polo R WRC.

Ogier will start from ninth on the road: Qualifying winner Mikko Hirvonen, who had first pick of starting positions, chose thirteenth to start in his Citroën DS3 WRC.

Ogier says the hard tyres he selected were the wrong choice, and running first through the stage was probably not an advantage:

“I am not happy with that qualifying. We had the disadvantage of having to open the stage."

"We took the safe choice with the hard tyre compound. What we didn’t expect was that there would be quite such a big difference between the hard and the soft."

"Qualifying is very important here at the Rally Mexico, in order to give yourself a good choice of starting position. We still have that."

"Our goal is to finish the rally and get a good result. Compared to our rivals, we will have an extra set of fresh tyres to use on the special stages.”

VW teammate Jari-Matti Latvala finished seventh fastest, and will start from seventh position:

“Obviously the soft tyres have produced the better times in qualifying, while we opted for the harder compound."

"At first glance, starting from seventh does not look ideal. However, we will have to wait and see how the rally pans out – it could ultimately be an advantage to have more hard tyres left. After all, the number of tyres is restricted to 28."

"Our priority remains to use our first gravel rally to close the gap on our rivals in terms of experience with the Polo. We can only do that if we complete the full distance."

"As there are a lot of stones and rocks lurking on the stages of the Rally Mexico, we concentrated hard on documenting these perils very precisely in our pace notes during our preparations. We feel well prepared and are looking forward to the spectacular start in Guanajuato’s old town.”

[COD]

What was the logic of VW running hard tyres in a 6.27 km qualifying stage? Looks like a mistake to me!

They are confident they can beat the weak opposition despite starting order when they have a set more of softs.

[dimviii]

. I wonder if Ogier will comment on the choice.

“It probably wasn’t the ideal choice for this stage. We’ll see whether it was a good idea or not to tyre to look after my allocation of hard and soft tyres for the rest of the weekend,” observed Sébastien Ogier (5^th) who seemed a little jumpy after qualifying.

[Sprocket]

I'm thinking maybe from what is being said here and from the driver quotes, they thought they would take qualifying on hard, then run more of the SS on softs?? It's the only logic I can see to it.

That backfired then.

True Mikko had better start position for qualifying, more reason then for VW to go with soft not hard, but now Mikko is just where he needs to be. Looking on WRC.com he has is smile back, happy Mikko = fast Mikko

[Fast Eddie WRC]

From Mr Block, something to enjoy while we wait for SS1...

[Fri]

Shakedown & QS pics:
rallysport.hu - Rally GTO Mexico 2013 - shakedown

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Thats some idea of how rough the stages will be !

[Kielder]

[oyunbozan]

http://youtu.be/isrYgwz9JVY
they used the last photo posted here as cover

[MAXLD]

Interesting shakedown, this one is going to be interesting to follow Live...

- Will Ogier provide a good performance with the Polo on this type of surface and road position?
- Starting later than Ogier, can the young Ford and Citroen drivers take the advantage? Will they be able to handle the pressure (and stay on the road) if Ogier eventually starts to pull ballistic times? They will have Ogier's splits by the time they start, and during the stage...
- Can Hirvonen finally deliver a win or a podium...? He'll be in deep trouble if he doesn't... with that road position he has to provide at least a considerable amount of stage wins.

Let's see if we get a proper old fashioned full throttle fight. Sainz has plenty of experience in that department, he surely can give some advice to Ogier on how to drive under those conditions (Resumen Rally Portugal 1998 Canal + - YouTube).