Rally Italia Sardinia 2017

[Eric]

Stop it Neuville. Embarrassing

[Allez Andruet]

Pathetic. Grow up, please.

[Watson]

hahahaha I thought one of you guys faked it.

[wrc2017]

Has he really only the mental capacity of a 4 year old? I didnt know that

Pathetic. Grow up, please.

[dimviii]

[mknight]

Sorry, couldn't resist but I think that's enough of those jokes for me

For the record, I was happy to see Andreas back, and I wasn't expecting a top result. Still a disappointment after all the hype.

EDIT: Another point - if Citroen offers Mikkelsen more drives, does he even want them anymore in that problematic car?

Well was a bit retarded reaction from me as well.


Anyway to the last point, I was thinking about exactly the same thing.

After today I think we can conclude that Citroen indeed is a problematic car.

As late as after Portugal I was arguing how car is just fine and only Meeke is a problem, based on Breen's performance.

Now I agree car has issues, based on Breen's and Mikkelsen's performance.

Mikkelsen's progress was very limited and the comments and reactions not good (not talking about the comments for media with happy face on).
Breen was 1s away from winning a stage only to complain about undriveable car on next and loosing 1 min on the last (even without a spin that's really slow).

So car is difficult to setup and/or has a very narrow "sweetspot".

This still does not change my opinion about Meeke crashing. Retiring after 3 stages in consecutive rallies clearly doesn't help in car setup and development and yes you can try driving a bit safer. And no Mikkelsen didn't suddenly forgot how to drive after winning his last WRC round beating Ogier and Latvala in same car in straight fight.

The two questions:

1. If Citroen offered Mikkelsen contract for whole next year+, should/would he accept?
Based on this event so far the clear answer is no. He can risk getting stuck in twitchy car, then without a seat if Citroen pulls out, with people doubting his speed (after multiple rallies with bad car). Atkinson comes to mind.

I don't remember how the contracts are but even now there are at least 2 seats in other teams that are not so safe.

Hanninen - clearly slower than Lappi (not to mention Latvala), crashing.
Paddon -being in one of the two best if not the the best car and only having one 5th place after 7 rallies.

I don't see any other driver ready to step in that is clearly faster driver than these two. Sunninen probably is the nearest with potential, but he was decimated by Mikkelsen in the WRC2 rounds this year.

2. If Citroen offers him more rallies this year without further commitment should he accept?

This one is more difficult. You could say that sitting at home for a rally is worse than driving it...
I'd say yes but with one or both of these conditions:
- it would have to be a rally where C3 is likely to be fast and Mikkelsen is known to perform good in (so Poland, Germany, Spain, maybe Finland)
- proper test for setting up the car will be included

If none of these two is satisfied then I'd say no.

[Watson]

Maybe it is still slightly too early to slag Citroen off. It is Mikkelsens first rally in it let's not forget. Maybe over the course of three events with intesive testing he could get it more to his liking - maybe not.

If the C3 really turns out to be a dog though I wonder if Lefebvre is by far not as bad as he looked as well.

[BigWorm]

Mikkelsen definitely needs more time in the car. Swap duty with Meeke for Poland perhaps? Meeke deffo needs a reset, he hasn't done well in Poland in the past and his championship is over anyway. Mikkelsen on the other hand knows Poland well, give him some decent testing and a decent enough result might be on the table.

[mknight]

Maybe it is still slightly too early to slag Citroen off. It is Mikkelsens first rally in it let's not forget. Maybe over the course of three events with intesive testing he could get it more to his liking - maybe not.

If the C3 really turns out to be a dog though I wonder if Lefebvre is by far not as bad as he looked as well.

I would agree with that, if it wasn't for Breen's performance on SS 13-14-15 and his comments.

[stefanvv]

Well Breen certainly isn't a bad driver, and even he struggles this rally with right setup, presuming he has near as much test kms as Meeke. Citroen has 2 major problems, the car, and the leading driver.