[WRC] News & rumours (part II)

[rallyfiend]

There's a lot of rumours of people driving Citroen. Clearly they need the customers to underwrite the budget a lot more than they have in the past.

There could be more Citroen's than Ford's for a change!

[wrc1600]

As I wrote before Robert Kubica confirmed WRC entry next season in TV interview,no details though as for car or rallies (speculation about Citroen, Ford and now Mini). Matton was very impressed with Kubica drive in C4 despite late accident in Rallye du Var (co-driver error apparently).

[GigiGalliNo1]

What are rumors for

[Rallyper]

He'd probably want to after the number of mistakes he made in 2012.

Is he worth money any more (PR value aside...)?

For sure that´s a bargain for Malcolm!!

[sollitt]

Yeah. And what was Paddon won so far? .

Actually, everything. Apart from this year's SWRC, but glitches do happen .. event to the very best.
Many of you think of Paddon as young & inexperienced. At 25 he's no longer young. With 10 years of very competitive competition he is not inexperienced.
As a junior he was winning in his 2WD from the outset. He's won his domestic national series twice (no lightweight competition). Won the regional Pirelli Shootout. Had the 2010 PSD been a competition he would have won it. He won the 2011 PWRC unbeaten and each event by unprecedented margins. He has been the man to beat in this years SWRC and has won about 80% of the stages he's contested.
His speed is equal to Tanak without the accidents, he has matched both Mikkelson and Ogier at times this year in machinery that is not equal and with far lesser resources.

At the end of the day you can only compete against whoever else comes out to play but to dismiss them all as lightweight is arrogant and disingenuous ... and actually factually incorrect.
As Marco stated, there is a clear 'winning mentality', what I call ' the ability to win at will'. The only other person in the WRC with that ability is Loeb.

[Mirek]

Not that I would want to downgrade Paddon but please be objective. If You use numbers to support your stance use correct numbers. Fact is that so far he has won only PWRC which has a little meaning in terms of potential works drive. The rest has even lesser impact on WRC career, believe me. He must continue to prove himself. I strongly believe he can show he's as good as Mikkelsen, Tänak etc. but yet he defeated neither one of them.

I would also be careful with saying that he had much worse car than VW. VW boys were testing, using different setups, different dampers, geometry etc. even in one rally. Their main goal was to develop Sachs dampers and so was the tactics during events. I'm in fact far from believing they are already better than Reiger. Baumschlager's Fabia is probably the best You can get aside works cars and don't forget that Baumschlager and his team know the car as good as very little others. Baumschlager was involved in Fabia development from the very beginning and his engineers Walter Illmer and Josef Lank are both originally from Škoda Motorsport (Illmer was till this year car engineer of Kopecký in IRC). I would say the cars are close to each other in terms of performance.

[Humber]

Paddon probably needs to consider his co-driver options if he wants to reduce the possibility of a McRae/ Ringer situation when the older co-driver takes a break.
Who would be possible choices for Paddon to co-drive with ? Someone with a good quantity of WRC experience - Scott Martin ?

I noticed one rally in NZ that Paddon did with a different co-driver, Paddon was off the pace.
(Edit - I see the rally was 2009 Possum Bourne Rally with Nicole France - www.chrissport.co.nz) Paddon's pace should have improved significantly since then but some drivers' pace is a function of the confidence in the co-driver and the co-drivers confidence in the driver etc)

[sollitt]

...but please be objective.

Absolutely objective Mirek. The simple point I'm making is that people with a winning culture will continue to win regardless of what you throw at them. Each progression in a career that demonstrates winning behaviour is entirely relevant. To a competitor like Paddon, the step up to WRC is just another challenge to overcome, another car to drive and another set of competitors to beat ... something else to win. To most others, the step up is insurmountable.

[jbmarcus21]

Qatar M-sport deal is done !
M-Sport et le Qatar c

[Georgi]

Good news for the WRC and M-Sport !
I think that Ostberg can be the number one driver and Novikov the second one.