[WRC] Rally Finland 2022

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Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC

Rovanpera got away with the hit on the SSS in Estonia and going off the road today. He said himself he was lucky.

If you make a mistake there is an element of luck if there's a rock there or not.

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I think the difference is how much they push their luck. The likes of Loeb, Ogier or Rovanpera make fewer mistakes and when they do and get lucky it's quite obvious and seems unfair. The others make more mistakes, so the chance that they will find a big rock increases and eventually it happens.

Then there is also the theory that some supernatural rally luck moves from Loeb to Ogier to Rovanpera. We can obviously see the first two are not lucky anymore this year :P

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Originally Posted by Hüttünen

Top tier: Loeb, Ogier, Rovanperä
2nd tier: Tänak, Evans, Neuville
3rd tier: Lappi, Breen, Sordo
Ford Puma tier: the rest

As you can see, this is not that hard

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It seems to be quite hard, you got it wrong by calling 2019 World Champion a second tier driver.

So Rovanperä isn't top tier _atm_? I'd say, he is exactly that. Of course things can change in the future, like with Tänak: next car after title isn't really fitting to your driving style and the next after that fits nobody basically.

Tänak is truly very fast on all surfaces and it's a shame the car is what it is. He also very rarely goes off nowadays. Usually it's punctures that drop him down the leaderboard. On the other hand, he couldn't get the i20 WRC to go well on tarmac (which hardly anybody else did either besides Neuville) so he ain't "all mighty".

Rovanperä ain't god either but he has already found the way to drive Rally 1 Yaris very fast without big risks. Something Evans hasn't been able to do. Kalle was also very fast to get the feeling with the 2017 cars on all surfaces. Seeing Rovanperä and Tänak on Toyota would be super interesting (except that Toyota would probably win every rally...). One can only dream... of course it would be interesting to see Neuville somewhere else than Hyundai as well. Could he take some kind of a next step with Toyota like Evans did back in 2020 and leave the mistakes to a minimum?

So with current full time drivers I'd say it's Rovanperä & Tänak as tier 1, Evans dropped to tier 2 with Rally 1 cars and Neuville is there with him. Breen just doesn't make it, unfortunately, he is tier 3. Then rest of the Fords are tier 4.

Catching up with Breen incident stage this morning I see Katsuta had THREE mistakes on that stage and got away with them all ...

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Originally Posted by mknight

Yep, quite a crap reaction. Tell him openly to push then be angry when he crashes.

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c'mon, put that in context.

m-sport hired breen to get podiums. breen did first part of season cautious because of making mileage, lack of some rally experience, and so on. when millener ask for a push he doesn't mean win or bin. he mean it's time to get up aq notch and deliver podiums or podium-like performances.

remember there was people suggesting it was on same tier (or better) than tanak & neuville...

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Originally Posted by WRCStan

Finishing is everything for M-Sport, there's no title fight for anybody. Craig is hardly struggling whilst being under the biggest pressure to bring it home.

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Originally Posted by mknight

Does this equal "biggest pressure to bring it home":
https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/m-spo...n-to-the-wind/

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^ Pre-event PR hype

“I understand that he’s trying to get the positions we want to see, but retirements are 10 times worse than anything else. So it’s frustrating.”
https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/breen...stake-m-sport/

^ On-event reality

What an insane battle at the front ! Just pray the Hyundai doesn't let Tanak down eventually.

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Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC

What an insane battle at the front ! Just pray the Hyundai doesn't let Tanak down eventually.

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Indeed a great fight, so close margins!

And most importantly what a driving from top guys! Pure rallying heaven at the moment

Sent from my DN2103 using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by WRCStan

^ Pre-event PR hype

“I understand that he’s trying to get the positions we want to see, but retirements are 10 times worse than anything else. So it’s frustrating.”
https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/breen...stake-m-sport/

^ On-event reality

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I think Millener's communication as of late (this season) has been sometimes very counterproductive to say the least.