Rovanperä will take the win. Faster in 1st split but get better tires for the end of the stage.
What a stage from Rovanperä, hats off.
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Rovanperä will take the win. Faster in 1st split but get better tires for the end of the stage.
What a stage from Rovanperä, hats off.
Kalle flying! No hesitates here.
Kalle flying.
Croatia organisers should definitely leave this as a power stage!!!
This is close!
Big time by Kalle
But not tremendous in Split 3 and 4 (compared with Evans or Breen) so Tanak still has a chance with only 1 second late in split 1
Congrats to Kalle. What a rally he has done!! Coming WDC.
Awesome... Kalle wins and deserved !!
Knew Neuville would put it off. He just doesn't know when to bag the points he could probably be at least double world champion by now if he did
Kalle is fking epic holy shit!
will be hard one to swallow for Tänak not able to beat Rovanperä..
Hats off Kalle. What a stage
But it was only because of his puncture anyway
Great finish and fantastic drive under pressure by Kalle. Ott has some consolation with a decent points haul.
Congratulations to Kalle, a great victory.
Well played by Ott and Bluuford, regardless. ;)
Thierry proved that Hyundai have made their suspension more resilient, at least!
2022 World Champion in the making, although I really hope we’ll see more fights for the wins like this during the season.Quote:
Originally Posted by EstWRC
Tänak looking at the car thinking:”it should be my name on that window, hopefully in 2023 ;) “Quote:
Originally Posted by TypeR
Told yaQuote:
Originally Posted by meh
Oh please stop that kind of nonsense allreadyQuote:
Originally Posted by Eli
this was IMO Kalles best stage ever, i didnt think he has a chance against Ott with this hards.
The stage should have started an hour earlier :p
I was only joking.Quote:
Originally Posted by bandit12
Amazing performance by Kalle, I knew he improved but this is even more than I expected. Unfortunately, I see a very one-way championship...
Good job by Tanak, almost did the impossible. Neuville had the potential of winning this, but in the end he's lucky to get the podium.
At least we saw that Hyundai is up there in speed. But with their worse reliability than Toyota, too hard to bring the fight to Kalle + Toyota.
Full send!
Amazing rally, I'm speechless
Although we still don't know their pace on gravel, good thing we have a string of 5 gravel events now to see what's what.Quote:
Originally Posted by focus206
Anyhow, good return to form from Tänak getting his first podium since Finland last year, finally looked somewhat pleased with the car this weekend and despite his end of power stage comment, I really hope we see both him & Neuville fighting for the win in Portugal.
A little disappointed by Tanak’s loss as it would have helped to balance the championship.
But still it’s not against Kalle and he has made a superb job here.
For Neuville, really a difficult rally. But in the end, when we take a close look at it, it’s almost a miracle than the gap in the championship with Rovanpera is less than 30 points when we saw all the issues (and 1 or 2 mistakes) he had from the beginning of the season and Rovanpera’s level since Mid-Monte Carlo.
So I wouldn’t say the championship is over, it will be interesting to see how Rovanpera will handle the 7-out-of-8 gravel rallies series
Breen, we cannot say it is a good drive. Still 3rd in the championship but more because of the issues of the other (and only 1 point ahead of Loeb). And the 3 next rallies will be difficult for him (quite a long time he hadn’t made a slow gravel rallye and his road position will not be good).
Evans, completly lost here it seems. at least he brings the manufacturer points.
Lappi, difficult rally overall with a lot of mistakes even if he did some good times at some moments (road position?).
Difficult to assess the rest except Fourmaux with another big mistake; not sure he will be in Portugal with this mistake; maybe M-Sport should give him a rally off to end this bad streak.
Greensmith a lot of punctures so difficult to know; same for Loubet; Katsuta was not really good but we know he is not good on tarmac and he did it to the end at least.
In WRC-2, superb performance from Rossel with reliability and consistency.
Lindholm makes also some very quick times.
For me, except Mikkelsen which is a special case, the two drivers that could hope some program in Rally1 next year (or at least the most ready) if they confirm this season.
Great performance also by Kajto even if I think he will be short for title against Mikkelsen (and even Rossel )
A little disappointed by Cais’ performance even if, at least, he succeeded to go the finish without mistake.
Virves 4 min.early in to TC. and lost his win
"insert big facepalm picture here"
Yeah incredible mess in WRC-3 Junior with Pajari and Armstrong mistakes, this mistake from Virves (+ Kimathi out for Power Stage).Quote:
Originally Posted by EstWRC
In the end, the ones who benefit from it are Joona (clearly not the fastest and most potential driver but he almost never makes mistake), Armstrong (even with his mistake, he lost almost nothing with the mistakes of the other + his stage wins) and Franceschi (decent drive for a return).
Really difficult what will happen for the rest of the season.
Not in this rally particulary but Breen is famous to drop down on Sundays when big points are in the table. Monte Carlo was a good example. And many rallies last year.Quote:
Originally Posted by seb_sh
Rovanperä has more pace than any other driver in WRC. He don’t want to throw 12 points away. That’s a winning attitude. He is not a loser.
It was a very eventful and exciting rally! Really enjoyed it. Big congratz to Kalle, what an amazing rally and PS stage! A bit like Tänak a few years ago with Toyota. Also very happy for Tänak and Hyundai. In Monte, they were nowhere, but now at least Neuville was on par with Kalle. It was a bit difficult to evaluate Tänak's real pace as he was hindered by road position and later the gap was too big to really push. Anyway, as Hyundai has said that they are more prepared for gravel so let's see what will happen in the next rallies.
Well, one off for Rovanpera and Tanak/Neuville win and we again have an exciting championship. Everything is still open.
Fully agree. I would add one point, it seams the Hyundai has built a really strong car. Neuvilles crash at PS was quite e big one and still all the wheels were attached to the car.Quote:
Originally Posted by flat_right
I was only concentrating on Kalle vs Tänak time on power stage and didn’t notice that they had such a huge gap to others. Wow
Yeah, write it down for trivia: PS point was taken with losing 25.8sec. By RC2 car.Quote:
Originally Posted by EstWRC
Loved that from Kalle, great stuff.
He would have been really unfortunate to have not won this rally, but to do it that way was good viewing.
Not good leadership for the team!Quote:
Originally Posted by jonkka
But Breen is way off what most of us expected so far. They need 1 more experienced driver to get manu points. If they leave it as is, they are missing a great opportunity, with a car that is competitive (for once).
and now compare Neuvilles's crash to Tänak's slide into bank in Monte.. which ended the rally for him.Quote:
Originally Posted by sti123
nothing really indicated that Breen would be the top class driver M-Sport neededQuote:
Originally Posted by Sulland
Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk
Hopefully it's like that, but it's early to judge, could simply be this time the stars have aligned. Hyundai still had more gremlins such as alternator problems compared to Toyota. We'll see in the gravel rallies how robust suspensions and everything else is.Quote:
Originally Posted by sti123
Nothing to compare there.Quote:
Originally Posted by TypeR
i've been involved in rallying for 40 years.
That last stage performance by Kalle was one of the very best I've witnessed in that time.
Just sensational.