2008 Neste Oil Rally Finland - official thread

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Originally Posted by Helstar

And different, rallies were longer, cars weren't like on trails, there were more drivers and cars, better competition. etc. yes Loeb is the winner of this 'era' and his fans and him are proud, but the environment is poor.

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ok go back to the stone age then.....maybe in few years you will discover fire.

Why was more difficult to win in the old days ???

Loeb gave 100% to win in Finland and the ancient holy dinosaurs of rallying also gave 100% to win their battles as well...cannot see why was easier to win now from then? yes rallies were 100000 milles longer but also the final differences were count in years not seconds. As for the better competition hardly in the old days we had more than 2 championship contenders....

Its called evolution

oh there is going to be Loeb haters.... as much as I cheer for Jari & Chris I am just amazed by Loeb's consistent speed...

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Originally Posted by Helstar

AHAH get real ... it won't be true even if he wins another 5 WRC titles trust me ... here in Italy if I say "Loeb" half of the people reply "... who ?!" and the other half "meh, he's a bot but 0 emotions...", if I say "Colin McRae" they reply "oh, he was AMAZING ! My idol !", of course the videogame serie may also have something related to this, we have to wait until somebody publish a "Loeb Rally" videogame ... but ops ... it will never happen because he's not popular at all, that's it :p

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just because in your country people don't know who loeb is doesn't mean it takes ANYTHING away from him... thanks for letting us know about italian rally ignorance... :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by cut the b.s.

Correct on both points, but to be honest I have realised for some time now that Loeb is a bit special, the point I made in the earlier post was in reference to how people always think it was better back in the day...
Auriol and Loeb can both be very proud of their Finland victories, they both beat decent competition to do it


ps. I am alone in thinking maybe the Focus has a very slight edge on the C4 now? Maybe Marcus should have given it another year?

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Yepp, both can be proud but (always a mais!) having watched, or follwed both evnts I remeber "our gut feelings'.
Here I think you'll agree we all feel "If nothing goes badly wrong, Seb will win"

But back then I remember we were all surprised as hell, and some like me who really like Auriols character, were also delighted.

Maybe another way to think of the difference is Seb beat 2 Finns (realistically two were a real threat), Didi beat a dozen, and that's a bigger deal.
Truth is the Lancia was food but it really wasn't in the same last per cent as the Japonaise cars.

But that's just little crumbs of details, great results for both.

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Originally Posted by N.O.T

ok go back to the stone age then.....maybe in few years you will discover fire.

Why was more difficult to win in the old days ???

Loeb gave 100% to win in Finland and the ancient holy dinosaurs of rallying also gave 100% to win their battles as well...cannot see why was easier to win now from then? yes rallies were 100000 milles longer but also the final differences were count in years not seconds. As for the better competition hardly in the old days we had more than 2 championship contenders....

Its called evolution

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Because in the old days (stone age as you say) you would have 7-10 drivers all capable of winning when they had the chance. Ok with different machinery but all were heavy names. Some of them were at the end of their career some of them at the start. But it was different. When Auriol got the win Juha was second. Would you compare him with Hirvonen??
Take any 3 years you want from the stone age and tell me how many different winners you would have in 3 championships and how many in the last 3....?
And something else in the stone age the rallies were much more spectacular...
In the modern days you miss this excitement.

By numbers Loeb is the greatest of all times. He is a driving genius compared to the rest. Is he? For sure is great. No doubt about that. But he had too much positive parameters helping him up to now to his WRC career. A team and a car which was best suited to him. He never changed team and never experienced any serious difficulties with his car. I have nothing against him on the contrary I truly admire him for his achievements. But he is in an era where the competition is much more inferior and much more less. Simple as that.
With Gronholm for sure we watched some great battles, but it was just between them two...!

In the stone age you didn't know the top 3 spots before the beginning of the rally. And with absence of super rally someone made a mistake he was out of the event.

For you is evolution for me is just not interesting as it was.
Ask people what they would prefer to watch , the 2006 season on DVD or the 2001 or 1999, or 1995 season?

Historical win for a staight close duel.
Bravo Seb & Mikko !
Something very special to win there, on the holy land of rallying in front of so many die hard fans.
3 non Nordics only have won this Rally, all being Latins.
Great result for Chris and Stéphane and good perfomance for Dani and Marc. Citroën unexpectedly pockets a nice amount of points over Ford.
Not to forget the steady pace of Rantanen-Lonegren.
Next step : RAC 2008 !

The rally was fun, weather was mostly pleasant, too bad Latvala went out, but such is life.

WRC needs more drivers who don't brake halfway down a straight, three or four isn't enough, especially if two of them drive off the road.
Great drive from Loeb, he's the man. Mikko too, just not as big a man. :)

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Originally Posted by HaCo

Mmmh, don't forget Dudu yet. ;)

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I don't think Dudu has a chance with Seb , except if he experiences any bad luck or mistake. Dudu is not a WRC regular any more and thus he will not be able or push as much as he would want or have the form to push as much as he would want. I think he will be even behind Sordo who usually goes well on tarmac surfaces.

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Originally Posted by MikeD

F1 driver that Kovalainen

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Go here:
http://forums.motorsport.com/forums/...splay.php?f=94

And stay there.

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Originally Posted by N.O.T

ok go back to the stone age then.....maybe in few years you will discover fire.

Why was more difficult to win in the old days ???

Loeb gave 100% to win in Finland and the ancient holy dinosaurs of rallying also gave 100% to win their battles as well...cannot see why was easier to win now from then? yes rallies were 100000 milles longer but also the final differences were count in years not seconds. As for the better competition hardly in the old days we had more than 2 championship contenders....

Its called evolution

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Yes evolution. But ever since the subset of GpA which allows "World Rally Cars" to be built under much MUCH greater freedom, the cars, from shell to suspension strength, suspension TRAVEL!!! to gearboxes reliability---directly tied to REMOVING from the DRIVER the job of selecting gears---, to engine and especially turbocharger lifespan, the CARS are HUGELY, BIG GIANT STEPS improved over the early 90s Group A cars.

They are essentially purpose built competition cars in EVERY detail now, then they were BASED ON production body shells and with the limitations that comes with that.
Suspension was max about 200mm travel... now at least 275, maybe 300mm
suspension had to be attached to the body within +-15mm. No funny fenders if they weren't made in series for 5000 road cars,

I want to ask when people have such obvious contempt for the achievements of people who they may have never seen, and it goes without saying, doing things that the complainer has never been close to doing:
Have you EVER seen the early 90s ccars driven by WRC drivers?
Ever [b][i]touched any parts, spent an hour going through the Homologation papers seeing what the parts that make up the car are like?

WAAAAAAAAaaaay back then the stuff was "pretty damn good" and crazy expensive.........Today the CARS are near perfect (hence the less than 2.5% difference in the speed between the amazing Loeb and the depressed, seemingly washed up hang dog Petter Solhberg only 2.5%) and to use the words of SEVERAL men who, unlike you, actually have driven both ;
"The cars are almost perfect--they just about drive themselves now..."

Sainz, McRae, Mäkinen all have said this about the modern World Rally Cars.
And they might possibly know just a bit more than a mere nameless fan.

Another factor is the current regs allows such few cars to qualify, and are so specialised and with the "can't homologate any new stuff" very often that
virtually nobody but 6 guys have top works spec, way beack when TOP works spec ---was NOT THAT FAR AHEAD of what LOTS MORE PEOPLE could scrape together.

And as for Championship, that is SEASON LONG Championship, yeah that's one thing but who cares?
On individual events there were lots of people fighting for top 25 places in cars MUCH NEARER in terms of speed THE CAR WAS CAPABLE OF.

Thus it was harder then beating 12-15-20 near equal cars than just beating 2.