Also wasnt it the case that Lappi was signed to Citroen before they had signed Ogier ? So Lappi may also have thought he could be the Team's no.1.
But whatever, it too late for him to be crying now. The C3 had well-known problems before he.joined.
Printable View
Also wasnt it the case that Lappi was signed to Citroen before they had signed Ogier ? So Lappi may also have thought he could be the Team's no.1.
But whatever, it too late for him to be crying now. The C3 had well-known problems before he.joined.
Problem with the c3 is it's fundamentally flawed. After 3 years I don't think that's unfair to say.
You work hard to improve one area of weakness and it effects something else - they worked so hard on gravel for years that now this season they were totally lost on tarmac in corsica. It's a sorry state of affairs but goes back to Matton's poor management and too many risks made in the design and development of the C3. Since then Citroen have been playing catch up ever since...
Sent from my SM-A705FN using Tapatalk
And yet they have most successful rank in titles in world stage. They are in game so long that there's no excuses to make a superb car from beginning. How could M-Sport do it without any serious budget?
I don' think that Xsara, C4 and DS3 was worst cars out there. I don't say C3 is bad, but in two years they could find a solution with their knowledge and experience. They are in this sport for many years.
And Toyota with big budget (also Hyundai) have big problems. Maybe that's a good thing so events are a more unpredictable and not dominant like in VW years. Well they have another story. If Ford, Hyundai and Citroen would be even back then I don't think that they would have so much wins and titles. Citroen didn't give a shit anymore with their programme, drivers and a car was out of date. Ford didn't have a budget since Ford pull out and car was old. Hyundai just start. So what real competition did VW have?
Now Citroen seems that they also don't care much about their development, even we don't know if they will be next year in championship. M-Sport is trying to catch up and are doing a pretty good. Well Hyundai and Toyota have their own battles. Hyundai with drivers and Toyota with reliability (and Latvala).
In terms of reliability C3 is clearly the best of the 4 cars atm. It was also the only one that didn't have cooling issues in Mexico from the start (took Toyota 2 years to fix).
In terms of performance the issue imo is that it lost basically a year or more just fixing issues while others have kept improving.
To VW's credit, they did a hard job very, very well and made it look easy.
Their planning and execution were near perfect.
They had good facilities and background knowledge of motorsport from years of Dakar.
They ran the team (people & equipment) for one year as an S2000 team before they started with the WRC car.
They tested the car for a long time, all over the world, and arrived with a car that was ready and very, very capable. (They bypassed cooling issues in Mexico because they went there and tested, tested, tested BEFORE they entered the championship)
Anyone else could have also entered the sport in the same way, but no one in recent history has. VW achieved what they did through a lot of hard work and a clever strategy that gave them a maximum head start. They then capitalized on that with good organisation, clever engineering and a good budget.
They seem to have bounced from losing faith in one department to another in looking for the failings of the car & team.
They lost trust in Meeke, then the engineers/designers and followed that up with the management. Only now do they have a recognised championship contender driving the car to eliminate at least that doubt, Meeke was fast but erratic, so for engineers it was easy to point the finger. In honesty they probably lost most of 2017 blaming him when the car wasn’t working.
It does look like they are now pulling the right way, but I have to say it looks like progress is slow from the outside...