Tour De Course 2017

[BigWorm]

Overall event performance

Good:
Neuville - push on saturday morning was epic, no visible mistakes (only one "almost spin" loosing 2-3 secs), though impossible to say if he would have defended against Ogier on saturday afternoon
Breen - really great, even without considering the huge difference in experience vs Latvala and Sordo
Citroen - I would say this was first time they have shown consistent good performance this season
Toyota - imo, a bit of a surprise with relatively good times (considering the drivers)


Neutral:
Meeke - fast on friday but he was fast also last year with DS3 (between the crashes), loosing time on saturday so not sure he would have held it all the way tbh.
Ogier - turning into a bit of Latvala with the constant setup changes and inconsistencies, strange since he had long test before. Shown speed on saturday afternoon. Very good points for WC though.
Tanak - kind of standard pace on tarmac even without the problems.
Latvala - obviously difficult to judge with Toyota, but rest was pretty much the normal "confidence-no confidence-confindence-no confidence"
Sordo - the usual, " safely" 3-4 on tarmac
Hyundai - surprisingly they weren't clearly the fastest car like the previous rallies, specially strange since slower and twisty sections seemed to suit them before


Bad:
Ford reliability - again/still problems with one of the cars every other stage
Lefevbre - plenty comments on him already, home rally, 3rd in C3 still constantly slowest and crashing, needs more time in R5 or DS3?
Hanninen - also plenty of comments, two crashes (last one cost 2 manu points when nothing was at stake), back to where he was last time in WRC as well as whole this season. Some fast stages and crashes all the time.
Evans - this is the rally he made the best results so far in his career, and there was not a single time that gave some hope, even with the unknown tire factor it's imo quite a disappointment.
Paddon - New co-driver and all that, but still clearly outclassed by Breen after 2.5 season in WRC. So far real disappointment this season. (yes, Monte can have something to do with it)

I'd skip the neutral section and move all of them except Sordo to the good.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

nowhere because of the car, yes Tänak went out friday but he also lost a lot of time yesterday because of the car problems...

Dont make excuses, Tanak lost all chance of points with his crash.

[A FONDO]

Corsica WRC 2017 - SS6 - Ogier - incar cam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHUT6Ov0_aM

Corsica WRC 2017 - SS5 - Latvala incar cam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVZycpXdzfg

[car]

It's something I find interesting about the modern generation. They've got to the point now where they research and review the stages so much that they can remember them almost corner for corner.

That's something Paddon said in a talk before Finland last year. We see Latvala do it all the time on TV too. I guess having such limited stage miles compared to years passed allows the drivers to do that. It's the reason why Breen only lost 11 seconds yesterday doing the entire stage without an intercom. He said he pretty much knew it anyway.

It's a big reason why experience in the WRC is so valuable. So not only do you have notes but you also remember the stages.

Good point and well made, especially the bit about Breen...
It kind of takes a lot of the 'real' element of rallying away.
I'm sure I'm with many who would prefer a more mixed bag of stages at each event to mix it up a bit.

[Rally Power]

Breen have fighting spirit but, get luck of speed. But Sordo! Being only 2.5sec and driving like a girl to a market!? Agrhhhh. Where fighting spirit? Where cuting? pushing? Looks like here don't care about place he was be.

Don't be unfair. Didn't you hear Sordo after SS8 saying that he's pushing like hell but times don't come out? These new cars are more demanding to tune and drive and if drivers don't feel at ease with their setup they simply can't be fast. That's precisely what happened to Neuville on first day an Ogier yesterday morning. Also it would be stupid to risk a podium just to be ahead of Ogier and overall Sordo still managed to be the best placed 2nd driver.

[Rally Power]

Congrats to Neuville/Gilsoul and Hyundai team. Corsica was a interesting event ant it showed how competitive and matched '17 WRC top field is. Mikkelsen MUST have a '17 car soon, otherwise WRC2 is boring like hell...still nice show from Sarrazin and FFSA backed Rossell in a DS3. He was on his second drive of a 4wd car and managed to be among top 5 all event long. We'll certainly hear more of him on the future! Dumas easily won RGT and Astier (yep, the same that surprised everybody in MC) won again WRC3, over 1m ahead Solans, best JWRC.

[KKS]

Corsica WRC 2017 - SS6 - Ogier - incar cam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHUT6Ov0_aM

Corsica WRC 2017 - SS5 - Latvala incar cam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVZycpXdzfg

Pretty sure links was banned very soon.

[Rally Power]

Teemu / Rallirinki‏*@HartusvuoriWRC
#TourdeCorse SS9 Antisanti-Poggio di Nazza (53,78 km) ran in exactly same way in 2016 and 2017.
2016 - Meeke 33.11.6
2017 - Neuville 32.34,6

SS9 can't be compared because last year it was wet. SS2, SS4 and Power Stage had similar conditions and ’17 cars were faster between .6 (.59 Meeke on both first day stages) and almost .7 (.67 Latvala today at PS) per km than ’16 cars. Honestly I was expecting them to be over 1s/km by know, but somehow it’s positive that they aren’t so fast. Btw, today time clearly shows that Latvala was really flying!

[mknight]

The avg. speed on the stages isn't that high. Mechanical grip>aero.

[EightGear]

Interesting rally, at least until yesterday when Meeke blew up his engine and Ogier hit trouble. It was shaping up to be a big 3 way fight but Neuville could quite easily grab the win after the trouble for the others. I'm glad Neuville won though, good stuff.

For the championship to become really interesting we will need 1 or 2 Ogier DNFs though otherwise he will walk it easily by being consistent.

On towards Argentina, where Meeke appears to be the favorite already because of his starting position.

Oh and Lefebvre really is quite useless.