That`s a poorest PR I´ve seen in ages.
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Having watched some of the fan shot vids, these cars could become a better generation than the last when developed. Unreal noise and power, plus they are much more twitchy and difficult to drive which will lead to more moments/ different lines. Not so much on rails with the lesser suspension and aero, and I'm all for it.
Think driver talent can make a bigger difference than the last gen. Look at the two Sebs here....., and you'd sense that someone like McRae, Vatanen, Makinen etc etc etc would love wrestling with these beasts and trying to tame them.
Monte has a special rule that only the best 50 cars can start Sunday. Camilli is currently at P71 so they would need 21 cars to retire in front of them tomorrow in order to finish the rally.
Similarly in their class, they are P20. They would need half of the cars retire tomorrow to get any points (and above reason means they couldn't start the power stage).
and a little whine as always about starting position.
“Starting first was definitely not an advantage either,” he added.
“The sun was coming through, the road was gaining [speed] faster, especially for Loeb starting half an hour behind us.
“It was a mix of a couple of issues,” Ogier told DirtFish.
“One of those is that probably, with Simon [Jean-Joseph, two-time European Rally Champion and Ogier’s safety crew driver], my gravel crew were a bit on the safe side.
“The information I received from them was very safe and slowed me down quite a lot on the frosty section, which they described a bit more towards being ice.
“That can make a big difference on such a rally. We’ve been talking about it tonight and we said, OK, tomorrow we do better. It’s always a very difficult task for them so I don’t blame anybody.”
Ogier made a decision to back off in light of his cautious pacenotes, which in turn made a strong rhythm harder to find on the latter parts of the stage, where he dropped the most time.
https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/the-c...lo-rally-lead/
He was a big bit down on Evans before any of the icey downhills and corners at the end of the stage though? Iirc Evans was about 7or8secs up at split 2 on that stage. Loeb I guess would've been more up.
Yes he may have been too cautious towards the end and the gravel notes could've been better, but I don't think he drove well the whole stage regardless.
I wasn't able to follow at all today.
But now when I look on the overall results I have to wonder about all the hype about Greensmith. Yes he won a stage, but is 7th and has 7th time for the leg. So basically similar like in say Croatia last year and it's his 3rd time here in a WRC. Previous year it was also normal with 1-2 good times and a few terrible ones.
For other Pumas Fourmaux crashed from 6th, Breen is 6th and 6th in leg.
If Loeb wasn't there what would we say about the speed of the Puma? Maybe something like "not so much behind"?
Now when Loeb is there we (and MSport) might only wonder what could have been if they had more top drivers......and Loeb is only confirmed for Monte and has schedule conflicts with quite a few rallies for rest of the eason.
(Breen should be better on other rallies where he has more experience, but he still lacks it for half of the rallies in the season. So I really doubt he can challenge for championship)
Tänak to Estonian media: "The day started like it ended yesterday, luckily we managed to fix it quickly. After that it went quite okay, if we had Monte like conditions then the car was actually quite okay but if there is dry and good grip tarmac stage then we have problems and we dont have speed but this is a thing we already knew and we know why it is like that. In the end the situation isnt that bad as it first seemed. Yesterday it was stress and chaos but overnight the mechanics did all the needed work and its okay today. I would like to change things for tomorrow and we know what to do but unfortunately we dont have the parts to change the set-up. The car is comfortable to drive but not fast enough but has potential. The snowy parts tomorrow on stage can favour us but it all depends on the tyre choice and how the conditions change overnight."