It does look a lot like a broken shock.
That must be great news for the manufacturers. They can stop spending millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of testing to develop and improve shock absorbers. Broken ones work just as well, or even better.
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Whatever happened behind the scenes it surely affected Ogier mentally. Thinking about this, imagine if a source came up to you (as Ogier explains) and said they are planning to stop Sordo so Nueville can get no dust etc. This would mentally fire anyone up... Which can then cause you to push hard and crash. Luckily Ogier is a pro and he survived the power stage.
In the end Hyundai never did such a thing, but maybe they planted the seed in Ogier's head to cause problems. If Sordo did not indeed tell Ogier and Ogier had a different source, he should never trust that source again since all it did was cause stress.
Don't forget, Adamo is an Italian and looks like a mobster! He probably will continue to mind fu@k everyone. He's already booted Andreas without any hesitation. When he hugs people in the end it's scary. One of those "that's what you get for doing good, but do bad and I punch you just as hard as I hug you kind of hugs"
While I don't like Adamo (from what we have seen so far) , over the years there have been plenty of examples that Ogier can be quite nasty when things don't go his way or he is in a close fight.
Juts recently he basically got Loeb kicked from Citroen/PSA after 19? years cause he did not want him to drive part time there (with good road position on gravel) and take his points/overshadow him.
So I am just not buying the Adamo = evil, Ogier = saint, simple narrative that some seem to follow.
I dont believe this was mind-games against Ogier by Adamo. He mainly wanted to get better points for Neuville and forgot the bad effect his plan would have on Meeke.
And Ogier after hearing the story it didnt affect him at all in the rally. But maybe he did want to show Adamo in a bad light afterwards, to make him think twice about doing anything bad against him in future.
The tweet from Official WRC account with Ogier making the accusations seems to have been deleted today.
And I can't find the transcript of the press conference now (but that one was already missing most of it when it was first published).
This seems to be a FIA issue on next event. They, FIA, have to talk through this whole mess and clear it up once for all.
Ogier was crying when Citroen wanted to sign Loeb for a partial rally calender. Ogier said it's problematic, but I do not recall the exact quote...
I actually forgot about this and this is pretty bad when you really think about it.
EDIT: here is a good read:
https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/1...ests-like-loeb