I don't really see anyone saying all changes are due to Østberg, that would be foolish.
Equally foolish as claiming all changes are due to Meeke.
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I don't really see anyone saying all changes are due to Østberg, that would be foolish.
Equally foolish as claiming all changes are due to Meeke.
In the article that was linked, kind of gives the impression that Mads pretty much gives himself the credit for turning the car around.
But yes, agree Meeke can't be given all credit either, but the reports all said the other drivers were asking for the same thing as Kris, and Loeb ran very similar settings to Kris. Therefore, he must have a pretty good grip on car setup.
Considering the pace of Citroen, I wonder might it change Ogier's decisions about next season?
It's just one rally...
It’s also well documented that Meeke and Citroen staff were delighted with the car during the 9 months they spent testing it and complains only started after the first rally outing, which means the whole team was caught by surprise.
With only a few engineers left from Xsara/C4 days and a leading driver with no experience on active diffs they clearly struggled to find a quick fix; inviting Mikkelsen to give an extra help or calling a former WRC engineer to replace the tech director were ways to speed up the process and it makes little sense relate them to Meeke remarks.
Btw, Ostberg long experience with the Impreza and last year on the Fiesta can actually be usefull to Citroen; we shouldn’t forget he already managed to improve the C3 set up in Sweden.
Valid points. Citroens problem was however, relied heavily using the same sort of roads in France to develop the car. Even in a road car, you can hammer up and down familiar pieces of road and the car can feel fine. Take it on other road surfaces and that same car that felt fine elsewhere can feel a lot different, even with much greater tolerances engineered into the suspension and steering settings to allow for the variation in road surfaces a road car has to cope with.
The reason why they went with Mads, he doesn't tend to bin it too often. Citroen started the year with a fixed budget, not an infinite one.
Kris is a very quick driver, but drives 100% all the time. Fine if the car behaves, but if it's got fundamental problems it's better to drive at 95% and bring the car home, so money can be spent on development instead of repair costs.
So as Tanak checks out in Rally Finland, and Otsberg has the chance of a lifetime to win Rally Finland and go down as a legend... his stage end comments read..
OSTBERG:"We are trying to increase the speed step by step, it feels quite good. We're not willing to do anything stupid, at these speeds you want to stay on the roads."
The car is still as good as yesterday, but Ostberg doesn't have the IT factor.
He is still doing great, being the second fastest. Toyota was fast at his home event already last year, add Tänak to the equation and it`s just magnificent, but he is still in front of the other 2 Toyotas, winners/leader of last years event.