They should send at least Gryazin and Solberg between first cars as both are not fighting for WRC2 points and their position in overal classification cannot change.
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It's a stupid rule, but rules are rules.
Ogier unfastened his seat belts, removed his gloves and opened
the chin strap of his helmet between the Flying Finish and Stop control of SS 13.
1500€ fine
Overrated ? Wow that is crazy. If you want to make this argument why not do with Ogier in VW which was the best car at that period and Loeb retired when he started winning. You can't call a driver overrated who has made history in the sport.
Both Tanak and Rovanpera are not overrated. Especially Tanak in my opinion is underrated.
If Evans keeps driving at this pace he will not challenge both Kalle and Ott for the remainder of the season. Kalle now getting better with these new tyres on gravel and Ott is showing great speed this season. Only question about Ott is the reliability of Hyundai and unfortunately with this car he is not better than Kalle on Tarmac. In high speed events Toyota has the edge. Remember Tanak was going absolute flat out to win 2022 Finland and he barely managed that by 6 seconds over Rovanpera.
Remember that Evans lost only one point against 2nd placed driver on the leaderboard after this event. So yes, if he will be driving at this pace, he will still win the title. Also last year consistency in Neuville bring him the title. Not wins.
Evans cannot keep showing this slow pace and capitalising from others mistakes because this will eventually come to end. He needs to step up a bit in terms of pure speed.
His rivals are 2 world champions. I think Elfyn has another difficult task ahead of him sweeping the road in Greece. His chance is only when Kalle and Ott have problems in my opinion.
However it is incredible to see that all 3 contenders Ott Kalle and Evans are very consistent this season (Ogier as well but he is part time at least for now)
At this point I’d say it is a shame the promoter, FIA and everyone else involved haven’t learned the lesson from the 2 previous seasons and put a tarmac event after Finland, if only to balance the calendar out and give all the crews a bit of a break after all these harsh gravel rallies (especially now when we have Kenya, Sardegna & Greece in the first half of the season), yes I know it’s a bit besides the point but I do think it would to some extent level the playing field.