rjbetty
25th November 2010, 19:01
Hello. Just thought I'd pop in and give an opinionated rundown on this year. I will say at the end of each driver how right or wrong I was compared to my pre-season prediction. I'll try to keep it short:
CITROEN SPORT (The main team)
1.Sebastien Loeb: Fair play, brilliant job again. Beat his target of 7 wins for this season. I kinda thought he was losing his focus and getting tired after last year and thought he might not manage to get the title this year, certainly not the 7 wins (he got 8).
MY PREDICTION = Fairly wrong, really.
2.Dani Sordo: Still no win and not any closer to Loeb. What's worse, now that Ogier's upstaged him. He shouted at his co-driver. Treated badly by Citroen - unceremoniously dumped/asked to pay a stack of money to drive for the Jr team. I expected further small improvements and maybe a win.
MY PREDICTION = A little off.
CITROEN JUNIOR (Though both their drivers are older (just) than me, so now I don't feel so much like I'm getting older!)
3.Sebastien Ogier - My goodness, I did not predict this at all. I need to get a new crystal ball. I thought he'd improve and finish around 6th in the championship. The most amazing thing was he beat Loeb fair and square more than once. He won 2 rallies! All in an era where only 4 other drivers have won rallies in the last 5 years. It was amazing that he completely had the measure of the more experienced Dani Sordo, who is not slow. Just brilliant.
MY PREDICTION - Very wrong!
4.KIMI - Hard to tell how he would have got on, but he was maybe about where I expected. His gravel pace was very good I think given he has next to no experience. Already close to the pace of other drivers who have been going for 5 full years and not making much progress (mentioning no names). Hope he stays next year. It would be interesting to see him more competitive.
Crashes were inevitable. Probably too many people are not having enough patience with him. Let's give him a chance. As long as he's serious and not just tooling around (there are enough of those kind of drivers around already!)
I did honestly think he would do a bit better, but I guess I underestimated the WRC again.
PREDICTION = Not far off
BP FORD WITH MONEY FROM ABU DHABI WORLD RALLY TEAM
5.Mikko Hirvonen - Aw! All the progress this guy has made season upon season, coupled with me thinking Loeb was slacking a bit, led me to stick my neck out and tentatively declare Mikko Hirvonen would be the 2010 champion! He started off in the best possible way, with that good IRC win in Monte-Carlo. Then when the WRC started he left Loeb standing in Sweden, then he just crumbled away like a chocolate flake! My goodness, a pretty shocking year. The car was maybe pretty bad. But Mikko wasn't on it either. 6th in the championship = :( for him
MY PREDICTION = Miles off (I'm not doing very well)
6.Jari-Matti Latvala - He seemed to crash less than his team-mate this year which is quite incredible. I really think the car was a shed this year. He can't be that slow. Well done for coming 2nd overall. I dunno where I thought he would be, 3rd-5th I guess, but with a small improvement in pace as he has done each year.
MY PREDICTION = Pretty close.
STOBART FORD
7.Henning Solberg - dumped his hefty co-driver for a newer, lighter, and prettier version, but was still as slow as ever. Garnered some praise for being fairly close to the pace in Mexico and Japan, as experts failed to realise running further down the order on gravel provides a pretty huge advantage! Hopefully he can do better in the new car next year. I did think he would add to his experience and edge closer, but no.
MY PREDICTION = Wrong. I thought he'd keep getting better.
8.Matthew Wilson - A fantastic year for young Matthew, whose 5 year plan culminated in the world championship. The relentless consistency, now combined with searing pace resulted in Wilson leaving "talents" such as Ogier looking ordinary. The highlight was Finland, which according to his father Malcolm who in 2005, sacked Toni Gardemeister and Roman Kresta for not "stepping up to the mark", was "impressive". This young guy will surely go on to become one of the all time greats.
MY PREDICTION = The sad truth is, he actually went backwards this year. What a shame. I thought he would at the very least keep going forwards.
OTHERS
FEDERICO VILLAGRA: Keeps improving. Beat the 2010 World Champion on Tarmac a few times. Pretty good for a partial programme. Trouble is he is getting kinda old for a WRC driver.
MY PREDICTION: More or less correct
KEN BLOCK: I'd hardly never even heard of this guy. He always wears a cap. He kinda looks like Adam Sandler when his cap is off. I didn't know what to expect from this guy except he'd probably be nowhere. He was actually better than I thought, sometimes matching the pace of World Champion Wilson. Be nice for him to come back next year and surely be stronger. Unfortunately, he is the same age as Villagra!
MY PREDICTION = Kinda wrong. Thankfully, he was better than I expected.
MADS OSTBERG: On more than one occasion, he almost beat 2010 WRC champ Wilson, while driving a 2007 Subaru!!! Not bad.
I ALMOST FORGOT - PETTER SOLBERG! Armed with a Citroen C4, a title challenge (or at the very least mixing with the top 4) made things interesting this year. He really did an outstanding job. Competitive everywhere except Sweden (what happened there?!). What a shame that the top teams don't like talented drivers, especially with personality. An amazing job from a privateer. I am appreciating more how hard it is as a privateer.
MY PREDICTION = About right, but given that I didn't realise how hard it was being a privateer, and I simply thought having a C4 would mean the job is done and dusted, he exceeded my expectations! Well done!
KHALID AL-QASSIMI: Getting better. Still absolutely nowhere though.
EDIT: Aw man, that wasn't short :(
CITROEN SPORT (The main team)
1.Sebastien Loeb: Fair play, brilliant job again. Beat his target of 7 wins for this season. I kinda thought he was losing his focus and getting tired after last year and thought he might not manage to get the title this year, certainly not the 7 wins (he got 8).
MY PREDICTION = Fairly wrong, really.
2.Dani Sordo: Still no win and not any closer to Loeb. What's worse, now that Ogier's upstaged him. He shouted at his co-driver. Treated badly by Citroen - unceremoniously dumped/asked to pay a stack of money to drive for the Jr team. I expected further small improvements and maybe a win.
MY PREDICTION = A little off.
CITROEN JUNIOR (Though both their drivers are older (just) than me, so now I don't feel so much like I'm getting older!)
3.Sebastien Ogier - My goodness, I did not predict this at all. I need to get a new crystal ball. I thought he'd improve and finish around 6th in the championship. The most amazing thing was he beat Loeb fair and square more than once. He won 2 rallies! All in an era where only 4 other drivers have won rallies in the last 5 years. It was amazing that he completely had the measure of the more experienced Dani Sordo, who is not slow. Just brilliant.
MY PREDICTION - Very wrong!
4.KIMI - Hard to tell how he would have got on, but he was maybe about where I expected. His gravel pace was very good I think given he has next to no experience. Already close to the pace of other drivers who have been going for 5 full years and not making much progress (mentioning no names). Hope he stays next year. It would be interesting to see him more competitive.
Crashes were inevitable. Probably too many people are not having enough patience with him. Let's give him a chance. As long as he's serious and not just tooling around (there are enough of those kind of drivers around already!)
I did honestly think he would do a bit better, but I guess I underestimated the WRC again.
PREDICTION = Not far off
BP FORD WITH MONEY FROM ABU DHABI WORLD RALLY TEAM
5.Mikko Hirvonen - Aw! All the progress this guy has made season upon season, coupled with me thinking Loeb was slacking a bit, led me to stick my neck out and tentatively declare Mikko Hirvonen would be the 2010 champion! He started off in the best possible way, with that good IRC win in Monte-Carlo. Then when the WRC started he left Loeb standing in Sweden, then he just crumbled away like a chocolate flake! My goodness, a pretty shocking year. The car was maybe pretty bad. But Mikko wasn't on it either. 6th in the championship = :( for him
MY PREDICTION = Miles off (I'm not doing very well)
6.Jari-Matti Latvala - He seemed to crash less than his team-mate this year which is quite incredible. I really think the car was a shed this year. He can't be that slow. Well done for coming 2nd overall. I dunno where I thought he would be, 3rd-5th I guess, but with a small improvement in pace as he has done each year.
MY PREDICTION = Pretty close.
STOBART FORD
7.Henning Solberg - dumped his hefty co-driver for a newer, lighter, and prettier version, but was still as slow as ever. Garnered some praise for being fairly close to the pace in Mexico and Japan, as experts failed to realise running further down the order on gravel provides a pretty huge advantage! Hopefully he can do better in the new car next year. I did think he would add to his experience and edge closer, but no.
MY PREDICTION = Wrong. I thought he'd keep getting better.
8.Matthew Wilson - A fantastic year for young Matthew, whose 5 year plan culminated in the world championship. The relentless consistency, now combined with searing pace resulted in Wilson leaving "talents" such as Ogier looking ordinary. The highlight was Finland, which according to his father Malcolm who in 2005, sacked Toni Gardemeister and Roman Kresta for not "stepping up to the mark", was "impressive". This young guy will surely go on to become one of the all time greats.
MY PREDICTION = The sad truth is, he actually went backwards this year. What a shame. I thought he would at the very least keep going forwards.
OTHERS
FEDERICO VILLAGRA: Keeps improving. Beat the 2010 World Champion on Tarmac a few times. Pretty good for a partial programme. Trouble is he is getting kinda old for a WRC driver.
MY PREDICTION: More or less correct
KEN BLOCK: I'd hardly never even heard of this guy. He always wears a cap. He kinda looks like Adam Sandler when his cap is off. I didn't know what to expect from this guy except he'd probably be nowhere. He was actually better than I thought, sometimes matching the pace of World Champion Wilson. Be nice for him to come back next year and surely be stronger. Unfortunately, he is the same age as Villagra!
MY PREDICTION = Kinda wrong. Thankfully, he was better than I expected.
MADS OSTBERG: On more than one occasion, he almost beat 2010 WRC champ Wilson, while driving a 2007 Subaru!!! Not bad.
I ALMOST FORGOT - PETTER SOLBERG! Armed with a Citroen C4, a title challenge (or at the very least mixing with the top 4) made things interesting this year. He really did an outstanding job. Competitive everywhere except Sweden (what happened there?!). What a shame that the top teams don't like talented drivers, especially with personality. An amazing job from a privateer. I am appreciating more how hard it is as a privateer.
MY PREDICTION = About right, but given that I didn't realise how hard it was being a privateer, and I simply thought having a C4 would mean the job is done and dusted, he exceeded my expectations! Well done!
KHALID AL-QASSIMI: Getting better. Still absolutely nowhere though.
EDIT: Aw man, that wasn't short :(