Rallye WRC Monte Carlo 2019

[Fast Eddie WRC]

And Ogier won with a car problem too:
"We had this problem with the throttle and it was pushing the car on the brakes so it was tough. I am very happy. Six years in a row with three different cars!"
#WRC #C3WRC https://t.co/kLlDpwBQFx

[Japé]

Great to have so tight fight until the finish line + 3rd place fight.

Could anyone say that Citroen would have had this win, if they would had continued with last years driver lineup available (Al-Qassimi, Breen, Loeb, Meeke, Ostberg)? Was it just about Ogier or has car improved as well?

[cali]

Great to have so tight fight until the finish line + 3rd place fight.

Could anyone say that Citroen would have had this win, if they would had continued with last years driver lineup available (Al-Qassimi, Breen, Loeb, Meeke, Ostberg)? Was it just about Ogier or has car improved as well?

Looking at Lappi's stage times you would assume that it's the driver who counts the most

[doubled1978]

Great effort from Ogier, no mistakes and good pace throughout...
Neuville excellent too, just that one error cost him the win..
Tanak, good pace except Friday which was strange..almost like the loss of stage 3 affected his mentality..
Loeb good effort in the circumstances, and good points for Hyundai
Latavala, ahhhhh..I like him but the up and down pace is so frustrating, at least no mistakes trying to out perform his level on this rally.
Meeke, very good...we only really got to see his true pace on 2 stages, the first and the last..everything else was just driving round.
Greensmith excellent, fast when he needed to be, safe when he needed to be...

[EstWRC]

nice table, pretty expensive too i would say.

[mknight]

Can somebody who understands these things calculate where Tanak and Meeke would be if they had lost no time to punctures?

[I appreciate that maybe they had (some of) the punctures because they were cutting harder than the other drivers, and to avoid them they would have to go slower. But it would be interesting to know the times.]

Obviously it's highly hypotetical. On one hand you can say that they (mostly Meeke) were just "cruising" after the punctures and didn't need to risk. On the other hand it gave them road position advantage on Saturday morning and they had no pressure on them (which especially for Meeke is imo rather important).

The time lost relative to the stage winner:
Tanak: 2:22
Meeke: 1:01+3:51+0:49=5:32

This would give Tanak winning by 7 secs and Meeke 6s behind Ogier on 3rd. Anyway this is extremely idealized cause they probably wouldn't have matched/won the stages as Toyotas weren't really dominant on Friday with times mostly around 3-5 even on same tires and for Meeke on Thursday Neuville had better tires on that SS.

A little bit more realistic time losses:

Using Ogiers time from first pass as a measure for Tanak since I believe they had same tires on both passes Tanak would loose 2:07:
In total time that places Tanak 8s behind Ogier on 3rd place - so definitely fighting for win, but not clearly first, that can be also said about the idealized conclusion

for Meeke we can use Ogier and Tanak as reference (timeloss relative to Tanak and difference to Ogier on SS1 used for SS2, timeloss to Ogier on SS4 used for SS7 and time gain relative to Tanak and Ogier on SS5 used for SS8 time), giving time losses of: 0:43 + 3:28 +0:46 => 4:57
This gives 30s behind Ogier - so maybe not really in the top 3 fight (Ogier, Neuville, Tanak), but safely 4th

Note that this is fast calculation without doublechecking so there surely are some errors for Meeke's calculation, but it gives an indication.

[EstWRC]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32b-M_bPWs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpO9EjHm1gw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6I93re9RX8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpNPpV9MIZo

[Morte66]

Obviously it's highly hypotetical.

Of course, but thank you for doing the math.

Well, for what it's worth, it points to an interesting year amongst the fast crowd.

[Morte66]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32b-M_bPWs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpO9EjHm1gw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6I93re9RX8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpNPpV9MIZo

OK, I am going to have to knuckle down and learn the driver numbers before I watch any more youtube.

How do you tell Ogier from Lappi when watching them approach in the distance?

[smsgrafica]

How do you tell Ogier from Lappi when watching them approach in the distance?

From the flag on the roof, if you're eagle eyed...

Astonishing win for Ogier. He's just so great adapting to a new car, it's simply incredible!