So, 3 months without WRC drive to Stephane
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So, 3 months without WRC drive to Stephane
Mate if you want to live in an alternate world where everything is rosey, and where you can have your head wedged in the clouds, then this thread isn't the place for you :p
There's vultures circling around Citroen because;
1) They took a year out to prepare for this year
2) Built a fundamentally flawed car with risky strategies in engineering
3) Ignored Mikkelsen and Jari when they became available, instead sticking with Lefebvre.
4) Refused to let Ogier test their car (if they really wanted him they should've let him test the car on dry tarmac, he might have actually signed)
5) Arriving at Monte and Sweden with setups totally wrong, having not tested anywhere near enough on mixed/snowy conditions before RMC.
6) Underperforming drivers. Meeke crashing way to often and Lefebvre crashing too much and showing little to no pace
7) Mechanical failure denying Meeke and Citroën successive wins.
8) Dropping the driver who actually managed to test the limits of car, and win them a race. Scapegoating Meeke before then admitting the car was flawed and the risky strategy (implemented by Matton and engineers with backgrounds probably in WTCC) had backfired.
9) Belatedly bringing in Mikkelsen for Sardinia, only for the Norwegian to drive like he'd forgotten he had a pair of balls and a right foot.
10) Then deciding to give Mikkelsen the only car with new components and Jokers spent on it for Poland (an event Mikkelsen loves), only for Andreas to get beaten comfortably by the slowest driver in the WRC this season (Lefebvre), who was in an older c3.
11) Now sidelining Lefebvre for 4months, after Lefebvre's only decent drive of the season. Potentially ruining his confidence and rhythm.
The WRC has been superb this season, no doubt. It's as competitive as it's been for 15yrs but that shouldn't hide the fact this has been an absolute shambles of a year for Citroën, and their drivers and management.
Considering their great history in the WRC, Citroen are a big talking point in general. So it's only going to create more talking points and debate (just look at this thread) when they're up Shit Creek.
Now finally straight from the horse's mouth:
http://int-media.citroen.com/en/citr...acing-back-mix
Quote:
QUESTIONS FOR YVES MATTON, CITROËN RACING TEAM PRINCIPAL
How do you assess the results achieved by Citroën Total Abu Dhabi WRT at Rally Poland?
"As soon as we saw the weather forecast for opening leg of the rally, we knew that our drivers wouldn't be able to challenge at the front. There were two reasons for this: the fact that all our testing with our latest upgrades had been done in dry conditions and their very poor position in the running order. Craig's race was then dealt a body blow at the start with a mechanical issue. Despite these handicaps, nobody in the team became despondent. As soon as the conditions became more even, our drivers moved back into the mix, making use of the work done by the team before the rally. From Friday lunchtime onwards, Andreas, Stéphane and Craig racked up a total of fifteen top-five times at one of the most intense rallies in the history of the WRC. There are no miracles in motorsport: the hard work we have done will take time to pay dividends, especially as the other teams have not rested on their laurels. The last few tenths are always the most difficult to hunt down."
This time out, it was Stéphane Lefebvre that secured the team's best result…
"When I told Stéphane that he wouldn't be competing in Sardinia, I asked him to work even harder in order to prepare for Poland. He had a good race here in 2016 and we knew that he had the potential to pick up a good result. This weekend, he managed to put together all the things he has learned in his time as a professional rally driver. He had the sense to push when he had the confidence to do so and take it a bit easier when the conditions were too tricky. And for once this season, he had a bit of luck too. This result will help to boost Stéphane's confidence."
Having said all that, he won't be competing at the next two rallies?
"In Finland, Kris Meeke, Craig Breen and Khalid Al Qassimi will form our driver line-up. In Germany, the three C3 WRCs will be driven by Kris Meeke, Andreas Mikkelsen and Craig Breen. Stéphane will return to competitive action in Spain. Just like with our mechanics or engineers, the drivers have to know when to act in the best interests of the team, because our priority is to get the best results for Citroën. Stéphane understands this perfectly well. He won't be sitting around during this period though, because he will be taking part in various test sessions."
Did you make the right call to drop Kris Meeke for Rally Poland?
"It's not the first time that this has happened in the WRC: several teams have made adjustments to their driver line-up in the past. I honestly believe that Kris needed a break. The aim is very simple: for Kris to come back in better form than ever, so that we can win together. For the time being, no one can say with any certainty whether we made the right or wrong call. But we couldn't keep doing nothing. We had to take action to end this run of results and I take full responsibility for this decision."
Kris cannot be held solely responsible for the team's poor run. Some questions have been raised about the handling of the car…
"We never said that. It is worth remembering, however, that after each test session, the drivers said they were very happy with the handling of the car. But they were unable to find the same feeling on rallies conditions. That means that some of the directions taken during development of the C3 WRC were not fit for purpose. Once we had taken the step back we needed to take, I asked the technical team to work on some upgrades that would provide the car with greater versatility. There have been a number of changes: upgrades to the suspension at Rally Sweden, upgrades to the transmission in Poland and others will follow over the coming months. This all takes time. With a wider driver range, we are confident in our ability to move faster in the right direction."
You also reorganised the team, with a new technical director…
"Yes, Laurent Fregosi – who had held this post for a year after having previously been chief engineer, chassis, for the C4, DS 3 WRC and C-Elysée WTCC – wanted to return to a more technically-focused role. We therefore appointed Christophe Besse, an engineer who knows Citroën very well since he was involved in work on the Xsara WRC at the start of the 2000s. This change is part of the new foundations established this weekend."
The aim for the 2017 season was to win races. Is that still the case?
"The priority now is to prepare for 2018. Some of the upgrades will need several months of development work and they won't be ready to be introduced until the start of next season. That doesn't mean that we won't win any more events in 2017. At the Tour de Corse, we showed the performance level of the C3 WRC on tarmac… However, I have asked the engineers to focus on development of the car, rather than on specific settings for each rally."
Good to see Citroen PR/Matton come out and answer a lot of the lingering questions.
So Christophe Besse appointed as Citroen Racing’s new Technical Director ... is this significant ?
Not living in a alternate world nor eluding Citroen problems, just trying to underline that Citroen has been treated unfairly by some journos (just like Toyota was before even start competing), that manage to influence the fans opinions.
The misinformation and disapprove environment is such that no one was able to rectify Breen’s Germany leave false news and people are now complaining about Lefebvre being away for a couple of events, only a few time after calling him useless…
Eventually the dust will settle and Citroen will rise to their top level but besides fixing the tech issues they also need to improve their communication effort (this Matton interview on their media link is a good start), otherwise vultures will keep circling around.
What set me off and prbly a lot of other people was the combination of two things (both already mentioned on previous page and countless times before):
1. When VW drivers became available Matton said that "he will answer call from Latvala or Mikkelsen only because he is polite, but they are not french and don't have 4 titles" => not interested
2. They didn't compete most of 2016 to prepare for 2017 and then come up without settings for Monte and Sweden with somehow less than top car
Now after 6 months and beeing dead last in both driver and manu champ. they finally started taking seroius actuion (perhaps too much action).
I think this part is rather important. One can understand it as one or both of:
a) The drivers did a bad job at developing the car/ providing feedback/ testing
or
b) The value of repeated runs of short test sections where drivers know every stone is limited - This would also explain why some people were so sure Citroen would decimate all after looking at their test vids in December.
This is something that Makinen used to point out about testing and working on setup. At least I think it was Makinen, correct me if i'm wrong. But what he said was as you repeat the same bit of road over and over you learn it and clean it and you end up driving faster than you would on a normal stage, so you have to take that into account.
Maybe during Citroen's test program they focused too much on setup for those roads so that masked some shortcomings to the car. Then it means they did a wrong method of testing.
Thanks for the information. That's new for me.
http://www.awdwiki.com/en/lancia/#Lancia_Delta_HF
Actually I'm not sure. Was that allowed to be changed in Group A?
I guess it was allowed because I think that Toyota didn't use same viscous coupplings on gr.A cars as on stock cars and those continuously change the torque split (although not in a very controlable way).
On Monte saturday was mostly dry. C3s of Meeke and Lefevbre were 7-10 place most of the day then a single 3rd place. You might remember/review the live stage from there on wrc+.
This lack of speed was later blamed on "not good settings" by Citroen press release. As it turns out now and Citroen admits it's more of a car issue being too sensitive to perfect settings.
There were test vids from Monte testing with rain/sleet/wet-snow, still looked plenty fast.
The testing venues were of particular issue pre-season.
Also why can you not admit also that the fundamental or the car are wrong, u always blame the driver at every opperunity?
Its clearer now the engineering team choose the test venues which suited the car, and gave false hope.
.
why are you talking about Saturday at Monte that was mostly dry,and don't talk about Corsica which was bone dry? Monte has compromises at set up,its not a dry setup.
Ok we have understand that you are not a citroen/ Meeke fun,but Meeke after 4 stages was 10 sec faster than the 4 time champion and 25 sec faster from the faster driver this year Neville. It was the SAME as we had seen and talk at tests.Exactly the SAME!!!
All teams use to test at small distance stages which make repeat passes.Citroen didnt test someway different from other teams,or from what was testing at previous years.
The problem wasn't at this point.
Just to finish this OT, apologies, I did some searching and it appears the road car was 56/44 front/rear, I assume to reflect the weight distribution.
I also found the link below stating that the rally car had the following centre diff split options: 50/50, 40/60 and 45/55 front/rear - there is no guarantee of course this info is accurate, but I suspect with the higher power and grip of the rally version, the engineers would have catered for the greater longitudinal weight transfer plus handling benefits of slightly greater rear torque percentage and have gone for the above options.
http://tech-racingcars.wikidot.com/lancia-delta-hf-4wd
With stock cars it makes sense to have more torque on the front axle to ease the handling for not that good and experienced drivers. I don't know how in 80' but novadays stock cars are generally made to understeer in critical situation so that possible crash comes at best frontally.
You completely missed Matton's point, that I am trying to emphasize with examples.
The car is fast when the setup is perfect for the conditions, something that is easy to do for test or a stable conditions/road rally = Corsica.
Whole day at monte is not stable conditions with some ice bits here and there => bad performance. Testing for Monte is stable conditions (same road, memorized by drivers), even with some minor weather changes => good looking test and feedback.
The problem clearly was at that point, the "sensitivity" of the car itself was not revealed by the tests. (without speculating who's fault that is, you can blame anyone depending on your angle, designers for design choices, drivers for feedback, people setting up the tests... team management for not getting other test drivers etc etc.)
just forreference all road evos have distribution at 50-50
It's not clearer to me at all, any test venue that runs over a day or more will prbly suit the car after you change the setup enough.
The two options I listed is the two possible meanings of Matton's statement, not my opinion.
I personally don't blame drivers only for how the C3 started. I do blame Meeke for Argentina 2nd off-Portugal-Sardinia if that's what you are asking.
I was talking about that you wrote.
Again one more time.
People watching ultra fast passes at dry tarmac and impressed,and exactly the same we saw at Corsica. Ultra fast car at dry stages.Cant say it more clear.
Repeated short stage tests doing all teams,not Citroen only.
Problem is not there.
Well in your opinion you now must agree the fundamental car design, tech team, and test venue hold a fair majority of the blame.
On Meeke 2nd crash at Argentina,
In a previous post, it told you to look at in car video wrc+. At 200kmh the front of the car was wandering from side to side, and he effectively understeer off the road. My opinion, that the rear wing was fitted incorrectly after the first crash, giving way too much downforce on the rear. It totally evident from the video if you care to look.
Sorry to continue off topic... but could someone please explain in a technical way to my dumb brain how torque split can be anything other than 50/50 over a differential unless said differential is toque vectoring (like evo rear diff or various lexus diffs etc etc). Provided all wheels have the same amount of grip and there is no differential speed, the amount of force sent on both the pinion gears should be exactly equal.
An interesting read on a torque split prototype transmission and diff:https://rallygroupbshrine.org/group-...p-s-prototype/