And yet there comes a point where that stops being a defence and starts sounding like an excuse. How many times does he have to make a mistake before Citroen pull the plug? Everyone says he really is talented and that his results don't show it. I could perhaps understand that if he was being let down by reliability, but he's constantly making errors of his own. In that case, his results *do* reflect his talent.

The only problem facing Citroen is that he is the best of a bad bunch. If they let him go, then there isn't really any ready replacement, unless they want to take Novikov or Tanak for the rest of the season and see who might have potential in the WRC-2 or -3 for a 2015 drive.