Tänak with Katsuta pace but he has no rush either at the moment
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Tänak with Katsuta pace but he has no rush either at the moment
Ogier showing what might have been.
By pure speed, there is clear top4. Or it is actually pure dominance by Rovanperä, as most of gravel rallies he has huge disadvantage to collect stage wins from first days due to road cleaning.
Ogier has done less rallies, but when he does, he usually has road position advantage.
Stage wins this season:
* 67 Rovanperä
* 32 Ogier
* 31 Neuville
* 29 Tänak
And then comes others:
* 16 Evans (10 of 16 from Rally Finland when Rovanperä, Tänak and Lappi were out already)
* 13 Lappi
* 9 Katsuta
* 6 Sordo
* 1 Suninen
* 1 Loubet
So my point is - like I pointed out previously, Evans is collecting points with "not that risky" driving. Without collecting stage wins that much. Others (Tänak, Neuville, Ogier) could fight with Rovanperä.
Also I don't think Neuville has lost all his opportunities to be a champion, there is still chance.
Tänak having more stage wins than Evans and almost equal with Neuville is surprising
Evans has the "not that risky" driving, but every time he has had the chance to lead the championship or grab the title, he crashed out.
So far this year Neuville made 1 mistake that resulted in DNF (Croatia), the same as Kalle (Finland) and less than Evans (Portugal, CER).
The big difference is that Kalle and Evans had 0 serious mechanical problems for the whole year, as they drive a Toyota. If Hyundai was as reliable/robust as Toyota, Neuville would still be in the fight right now, but he's not.
I still think Kalle would take the title as he's the best driver in the best car, but the point is that even if Hyundai will have Ott next year, they won't be able to get the title if propshafts, suspensions, turbo have problems while Toyota is always fine.