Thoughts on Kris Meeke's Recent Performances?

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Originally Posted by OldF

The only mistakes that can fairly be attributed to Meeke were in Monte Carlo and Portugal. In Sweden the car was undriveable, Argentina unpredictable, Corsica unreliable and in Sardinia the accident unexplainable![/I]

Mikkelsen, a man who has won three rallies and is considered one of the very best drivers in the world finished a country mile behind the winner. Eight minutes down on Tanak’s time with only minor issues speaks volumes. And I really don't buy this “I’m taking my time learning the car” line. Young Lappi, with only one rally at the top level and immeasurably less experience than Mikkelsen sets fastest times in six stages and blew the Cirtroens away. Mikkelsen was and still is a world class, rally winning driver - so explain that one with your stats![/I]

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He twists a lots of stuff to push his point. I might agree or disagree with this point, but either way I dislike how he tells half-truths or even wrong info to get it across.

Argentina second off is totally Meeke's fault.
Sardinia "unexplainable".... I guess it was aliens then.

Mikkelsen lost 2 mins due to puncture, and some 30-50s due to diff failure and rwd only so which is 30+% of the 8 mins. "Only minor issues". Yes he was very slow everyone agrees that so why the need to twist this.

Lappi... sure he has much less experience than Mikkelsen overall. But Mikkelsen had 1 day with 300 km on different gravel as car experience. Lappi 1 rally and prbly thousands of kms since he has been testing it for at least 6 months. He did extremely well yes, but car experience is incomparable in his favor.


Also this:

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Originally Posted by Rally Power

Interesting piece. It shows how current brit journos are so short seeing on Meeke’s driving approach. They’re helping him to fall off the cliff, not to avoid it.

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Originally Posted by mknight

Lappi... sure he has much less experience than Mikkelsen overall. But Mikkelsen had 1 day with 300 km on different gravel as car experience. Lappi 1 rally and prbly thousands of kms since he has been testing it for at least 6 months. He did extremely well yes, but car experience is incomparable in his favor.

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Don't forget Yaris is better car than C3. Generally I also disagree with Clark's "pink" spectacles. If the car is soooo underivable, what did Meeke do whole last year? Taking a few wins for the glory?

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Originally Posted by mknight

He twists a lots of stuff to push his point. I might agree or disagree with this point, but either way I dislike how he tells half-truths or even wrong info to get it across.

Argentina second off is totally Meeke's fault.
Sardinia "unexplainable".... I guess it was aliens then.

Mikkelsen lost 2 mins due to puncture, and some 30-50s due to diff failure and rwd only so which is 30+% of the 8 mins. "Only minor issues". Yes he was very slow everyone agrees that so why the need to twist this.

Lappi... sure he has much less experience than Mikkelsen overall. But Mikkelsen had 1 day with 300 km on different gravel as car experience. Lappi 1 rally and prbly thousands of kms since he has been testing it for at least 6 months. He did extremely well yes, but car experience is incomparable in his favor.


Also this:

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You look at meeke big high speed off on argentina.. the front to the car was floating left to right immediatly before accident at 200kph... my theory is the rear wing was refitted with wrong pitch after first accident, as the boot was totally missing.. so there was way to much down force on rear.. and light at the front.. it jist didnt turn in. Its not an unreasonable explaination. Just watch it again before making a judgement

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Originally Posted by mknight

He twists a lots of stuff to push his point. I might agree or disagree with this point, but either way I dislike how he tells half-truths or even wrong info to get it across.

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Yep. He also forgot to mention that during '15 Neuville did some rallys in Hyundai's B team and how harsh Penasse was to him at the time.

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Originally Posted by wrc2017

You look at meeke big high speed off on argentina.. the front to the car was floating left to right immediatly before accident at 200kph... my theory is the rear wing was refitted with wrong pitch after first accident, as the boot was totally missing.. so there was way to much down force on rear.. and light at the front.. it jist didnt turn in. Its not an unreasonable explaination. Just watch it again before making a judgement

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You can be right, but wasn't he needlessly overdriving it, just like on that final stage at Mexico?

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Originally Posted by wrc2017

You look at meeke big high speed off on argentina.. the front to the car was floating left to right immediatly before accident at 200kph... my theory is the rear wing was refitted with wrong pitch after first accident, as the boot was totally missing.. so there was way to much down force on rear.. and light at the front.. it jist didnt turn in. Its not an unreasonable explaination. Just watch it again before making a judgement

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that doesn't matter. even if the car was on 3 wheels and burning, he shouldn't crash it.

otherwise, whats next? i crashed because my tyres where worn? i crashed because the engineers didn't mount a second spoiler?
you can only drive as fast as the cars allows it, going faster and crashing out is the drivers fault.

yes, there is a serious problem with the car that makes it do strange unpredictable things, but they know that so its actually not unpredictable.
if you know that you will likely lose control if you go flatout over a certain jump, than you can just choose to back off a little instead of trying it and crashing every second time.

I think he meant loss of expected aero at high speed caused the off.

Think about it like Mercedes gt1 car at Le Mans in 1999, it can happen.
Whether or not it was in this case though is difficult to say, I thought it was driver error.

Amazing how some keyboards warriors seem to have all the answers, but couldnt get within 10s per km of any of these top guys.. and have no appreciation what its like to drive a 30km stage to within tenths of a second of each other. On a 30 min stage... if you think you can throttle back 1 percent...is 18seconds..2 percent is 36s... thats how tight it is. Its a total sprint. Come off 1% or your not comfortable with your car.... your an also ran. these guys have bigger balls than you could ever dream off.

The point is Clark is cherry picking facts in his analysis to support his point. The most blatant for me is forgetting Neuville got demoted and criticised then and even this year after his crashes. In the end Breen drove less rallies than Meeke and is ahead of him in the standings so one can argue something IS NOT working there. Also don't forget in Mexico, Meeke was lucky to escape from that car park. It could be much worse.

I think there is no single reason Citroen is in the state that it is, it's probably several causes:
- mismanagement of testing programme (relying on just Meeke)
- "smart" engineers who made a fast but undriveable car
- "bin it or win it" Meeke isn't as good as development as people say
- budget issues
- bad choices regarding drivers (not getting an ex VW driver, giving Lefebvre too much too fast)
- chaos within the team (contradictory statements and expectations)

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Originally Posted by wrc2017

Amazing how some keyboards warriors seem to have all the answers, but couldnt get within 10s per km of any of these top guys.. and have no appreciation what its like to drive a 30km stage to within tenths of a second of each other. On a 30 min stage... if you think you can throttle back 1 percent...is 18seconds..2 percent is 36s... thats how tight it is. Its a total sprint. Come off 1% or your not comfortable with your car.... your an also ran. these guys have bigger balls than you could ever dream off.

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so? I don't have to be a world champion to look and see some drivers are not crashing and one is crashing twice per rally. Be it his fault or the car, that's too much.

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Originally Posted by wrc2017

Amazing how some keyboards warriors seem to have all the answers, but couldnt get within 10s per km of any of these top guys.. and have no appreciation what its like to drive a 30km stage to within tenths of a second of each other. On a 30 min stage... if you think you can throttle back 1 percent...is 18seconds..2 percent is 36s... thats how tight it is. Its a total sprint. Come off 1% or your not comfortable with your car.... your an also ran. these guys have bigger balls than you could ever dream off.

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Basically it's true, but big balls aren't enough - you still need a brain