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Thread: Citroen WRT
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2nd July 2017, 21:30 #401
So, 3 months without WRC drive to Stephane
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3rd July 2017, 04:18 #402
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Mate if you want to live in an alternate world where everything is rosey, and where you can have your head wedged in the clouds, then this thread isn't the place for you
There's vultures circling around Citroen because;
1) They took a year out to prepare for this year
2) Built a fundamentally flawed car with risky strategies in engineering
3) Ignored Mikkelsen and Jari when they became available, instead sticking with Lefebvre.
4) Refused to let Ogier test their car (if they really wanted him they should've let him test the car on dry tarmac, he might have actually signed)
5) Arriving at Monte and Sweden with setups totally wrong, having not tested anywhere near enough on mixed/snowy conditions before RMC.
6) Underperforming drivers. Meeke crashing way to often and Lefebvre crashing too much and showing little to no pace
7) Mechanical failure denying Meeke and Citroën successive wins.
8) Dropping the driver who actually managed to test the limits of car, and win them a race. Scapegoating Meeke before then admitting the car was flawed and the risky strategy (implemented by Matton and engineers with backgrounds probably in WTCC) had backfired.
9) Belatedly bringing in Mikkelsen for Sardinia, only for the Norwegian to drive like he'd forgotten he had a pair of balls and a right foot.
10) Then deciding to give Mikkelsen the only car with new components and Jokers spent on it for Poland (an event Mikkelsen loves), only for Andreas to get beaten comfortably by the slowest driver in the WRC this season (Lefebvre), who was in an older c3.
11) Now sidelining Lefebvre for 4months, after Lefebvre's only decent drive of the season. Potentially ruining his confidence and rhythm.
The WRC has been superb this season, no doubt. It's as competitive as it's been for 15yrs but that shouldn't hide the fact this has been an absolute shambles of a year for Citroën, and their drivers and management.
Considering their great history in the WRC, Citroen are a big talking point in general. So it's only going to create more talking points and debate (just look at this thread) when they're up Shit Creek.
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3rd July 2017, 07:40 #403
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Now finally straight from the horse's mouth:
http://int-media.citroen.com/en/citr...acing-back-mix
QUESTIONS FOR YVES MATTON, CITROËN RACING TEAM PRINCIPAL
How do you assess the results achieved by Citroën Total Abu Dhabi WRT at Rally Poland?
"As soon as we saw the weather forecast for opening leg of the rally, we knew that our drivers wouldn't be able to challenge at the front. There were two reasons for this: the fact that all our testing with our latest upgrades had been done in dry conditions and their very poor position in the running order. Craig's race was then dealt a body blow at the start with a mechanical issue. Despite these handicaps, nobody in the team became despondent. As soon as the conditions became more even, our drivers moved back into the mix, making use of the work done by the team before the rally. From Friday lunchtime onwards, Andreas, Stéphane and Craig racked up a total of fifteen top-five times at one of the most intense rallies in the history of the WRC. There are no miracles in motorsport: the hard work we have done will take time to pay dividends, especially as the other teams have not rested on their laurels. The last few tenths are always the most difficult to hunt down."
This time out, it was Stéphane Lefebvre that secured the team's best result…
"When I told Stéphane that he wouldn't be competing in Sardinia, I asked him to work even harder in order to prepare for Poland. He had a good race here in 2016 and we knew that he had the potential to pick up a good result. This weekend, he managed to put together all the things he has learned in his time as a professional rally driver. He had the sense to push when he had the confidence to do so and take it a bit easier when the conditions were too tricky. And for once this season, he had a bit of luck too. This result will help to boost Stéphane's confidence."
Having said all that, he won't be competing at the next two rallies?
"In Finland, Kris Meeke, Craig Breen and Khalid Al Qassimi will form our driver line-up. In Germany, the three C3 WRCs will be driven by Kris Meeke, Andreas Mikkelsen and Craig Breen. Stéphane will return to competitive action in Spain. Just like with our mechanics or engineers, the drivers have to know when to act in the best interests of the team, because our priority is to get the best results for Citroën. Stéphane understands this perfectly well. He won't be sitting around during this period though, because he will be taking part in various test sessions."
Did you make the right call to drop Kris Meeke for Rally Poland?
"It's not the first time that this has happened in the WRC: several teams have made adjustments to their driver line-up in the past. I honestly believe that Kris needed a break. The aim is very simple: for Kris to come back in better form than ever, so that we can win together. For the time being, no one can say with any certainty whether we made the right or wrong call. But we couldn't keep doing nothing. We had to take action to end this run of results and I take full responsibility for this decision."
Kris cannot be held solely responsible for the team's poor run. Some questions have been raised about the handling of the car…
"We never said that. It is worth remembering, however, that after each test session, the drivers said they were very happy with the handling of the car. But they were unable to find the same feeling on rallies conditions. That means that some of the directions taken during development of the C3 WRC were not fit for purpose. Once we had taken the step back we needed to take, I asked the technical team to work on some upgrades that would provide the car with greater versatility. There have been a number of changes: upgrades to the suspension at Rally Sweden, upgrades to the transmission in Poland and others will follow over the coming months. This all takes time. With a wider driver range, we are confident in our ability to move faster in the right direction."
You also reorganised the team, with a new technical director…
"Yes, Laurent Fregosi – who had held this post for a year after having previously been chief engineer, chassis, for the C4, DS 3 WRC and C-Elysée WTCC – wanted to return to a more technically-focused role. We therefore appointed Christophe Besse, an engineer who knows Citroën very well since he was involved in work on the Xsara WRC at the start of the 2000s. This change is part of the new foundations established this weekend."
The aim for the 2017 season was to win races. Is that still the case?
"The priority now is to prepare for 2018. Some of the upgrades will need several months of development work and they won't be ready to be introduced until the start of next season. That doesn't mean that we won't win any more events in 2017. At the Tour de Corse, we showed the performance level of the C3 WRC on tarmac… However, I have asked the engineers to focus on development of the car, rather than on specific settings for each rally."
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3rd July 2017, 10:34 #404
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3rd July 2017, 10:47 #405
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Good to see Citroen PR/Matton come out and answer a lot of the lingering questions.
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3rd July 2017, 12:36 #406
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So Christophe Besse appointed as Citroen Racing’s new Technical Director ... is this significant ?
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3rd July 2017, 13:02 #407
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Not living in a alternate world nor eluding Citroen problems, just trying to underline that Citroen has been treated unfairly by some journos (just like Toyota was before even start competing), that manage to influence the fans opinions.
The misinformation and disapprove environment is such that no one was able to rectify Breen’s Germany leave false news and people are now complaining about Lefebvre being away for a couple of events, only a few time after calling him useless…
Eventually the dust will settle and Citroen will rise to their top level but besides fixing the tech issues they also need to improve their communication effort (this Matton interview on their media link is a good start), otherwise vultures will keep circling around.Last edited by Rally Power; 3rd July 2017 at 13:07.
Rally addict since 1982
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3rd July 2017, 15:57 #408
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What set me off and prbly a lot of other people was the combination of two things (both already mentioned on previous page and countless times before):
1. When VW drivers became available Matton said that "he will answer call from Latvala or Mikkelsen only because he is polite, but they are not french and don't have 4 titles" => not interested
2. They didn't compete most of 2016 to prepare for 2017 and then come up without settings for Monte and Sweden with somehow less than top car
Now after 6 months and beeing dead last in both driver and manu champ. they finally started taking seroius actuion (perhaps too much action).
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3rd July 2017, 16:02 #409
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I think this part is rather important. One can understand it as one or both of:
a) The drivers did a bad job at developing the car/ providing feedback/ testing
or
b) The value of repeated runs of short test sections where drivers know every stone is limited - This would also explain why some people were so sure Citroen would decimate all after looking at their test vids in December.
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3rd July 2017, 16:54 #410
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This is something that Makinen used to point out about testing and working on setup. At least I think it was Makinen, correct me if i'm wrong. But what he said was as you repeat the same bit of road over and over you learn it and clean it and you end up driving faster than you would on a normal stage, so you have to take that into account.
Maybe during Citroen's test program they focused too much on setup for those roads so that masked some shortcomings to the car. Then it means they did a wrong method of testing.
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