Quote Originally Posted by Nornbugger
Hi Noel, could you correct Kris please, seems he thinks that it was an over optimistic note that caused the crash.

I incorrectly thought he had recced all events last year, seems strange to me that he didnt, its not competing but it still helps to build knowledge.

Yall get a bit prickly when any says anything about Kris, I think for this forum anything said has been very mild, there are a lot of people who wish him well, just some are more blinkered than others.
Nobody gets "prickly" about Meeke here and most of us are not blinkered. There were a few over the years who repeatedly said, and I quote, "Meeke will never get a drive", "Meeke doesn't deserve a seat" etc, etc. Then all the nonsense about the Mini programme being rubbish, the car is too tall, Prodrive couldn't build or run a car that could survive a 5 km drive to the local supermarket and back on a Saturday morning. Next we had the rubbish about the short suspension travel etc, etc. Anybody who's been here will have read all that c-rap. The best one was somebody's brother who saw the car in Prodrive and instantly knew that it would be a complete failure.....
Sure, Meeke had his problems in JWRC, his speed and raw talent was never an issue and most saw that but he obviously did have accidents when he really should have been on the podium. Ok, many good drivers have their accidents but many confuse DNF statistics and automatically assume poor driving no matter the cause of the DNF and this seems to added to Meeke's reputation, deserved or otherwise.
As for his WRC career, as I said earlier, two drives over 6 years is hardly much experience. With Mini he's had 4 DNFs out of 4 starts. Looks bad doesn't it? Except 3 were mechanical and of course the off in Alsace. With that off it happened as I described, first pass he felt he lost time, 2nd pass the different approach was wrong. Most drivers modify a note when they feel it was not appropriate on the first pass, not rocket science. The crew are hardly going to make a mental note to approach a particular corner a few hours and 30kms later.............
Meeke got his seat with Prodrive the hard way, no money, no sugar daddy, no big backers. He's there because DR wants him there. For what he can do behind the wheel and his engineering/development ability, an unusual combination these days. So give the guy a chance to prove himself, I believe he will earn the respect of many more fans in due course.