Solberg 2nd, Loeb 3rd and Thierry 12th
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Solberg 2nd, Loeb 3rd and Thierry 12th
Strange. I do not understand their decision. All kind of rain stopped around 2 hours ago on tomorrow stages. Start of stage 1 is at 08:28 that is around 14 hours after the end of rain. Sun raises at 07:34. Jari-Matti starts around 08:55 for the shortest stage and around 09:20 for the second stage (2 hours after the sunrise). Latest weather maps, that just came out, say that there will not be even a single raindrop for tomorrow. I just do not understand Citroen decision.. even not in the longer term. And Neuville starts behind Nobre. Tomorrow we will have two 32 km stages...Quote:
Originally Posted by GigiGalliNo1
How on earth can they think of dropping this round......The Best roads in the Championship!
Stohl faster than Block and Araujo straight out of the box :) and Al-Raji & local with Impreza faster than the protons :laugh:
strange decission of starting order picks for me, Stohl for example said that he is quite happy that he has at least 3 cars ahead of him for sweeping the roads after the qualifying.....in his opinion even if it rains to be first car is an disadvantage on the very special slippery gravel roads of new zealand!
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But lets wait.....works teams are of course no fools at all ;)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention.
During Shakedown while the rally cars were on their free runs, the odd family wagon taking the kids to school would drive past at about 40 km/h. It happened at least 3 times.
Hard to say if the organisers allowed this to let the local farmers' wife to drop the kids off, or they, the locals, just thought f*#@ it and drove throw the tape on their driveways. On at least one occasion as Mum and kids drove past, steering at the spectators on their usually quiet rural road, you could hear a WRC car in full throttle not far away.
Scary stuff, especially when Jari Matti's average speed was 120 km/h.
Interested to see what other's at shakedown thought.
The starting order for Stage 1
First Mikko Hirvonen
Second Petter Solberg
Third Sebastien Loeb
4th Ott Tänak
5th Dani Sordo
6th Jari Ketomaa
7th Evgeny Novikov
8th Manfred Stohl
9th Ken Block
10th Armindo Araujo
11th Paulo Nobre
12th Thierry Neuville
13th Jari-Matti Latvala
If there must be an escort during a motorsport event, there should be officials car there, hence called an escort, and to make sure the road is clear when competitors start. If not, scary stuff. And I think there shouldn't really be any such interuptions to a World Rally Championship events. For smaller, local or national, I understand it, but never like it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maui J.
They should use a bit of forestry road for the shakedown or another piece of road with no residences close by, definitely getting harder to find these days with so much sealed road close to Auckland.
Latvala is likely to be starting too low, how many cars is he likey to catch in some stages ?
Sordo has a good start position if conditions are as I would expect them to be.
Strange stuff can happen e.g coastal fog, fog in the valleys of the 'inland stages', sunstrike as the sun is low etc
Expect Loeb easily in lead with Sordo if the car is right, somewhere close.