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  1. #2911
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    Quote Originally Posted by Norm75 View Post
    Ooofff, that sounded like a vieled dig at Paddon, with the we've seen in Finland who is smart and who isnt jibe and the fluff about getting on the train.
    More like a very obvious dig...

    Anyway I still keep laughing on those people saying that when Breen was in position to let Neuville pass it was the best he could achieve. Don't get me wrong he did very good job and much better than expected beforehand. But that statement is simply not truth. Even if we ignore fantasy-level ideas like Breen winning the rally then even if he was just ahead of Ogier I really doubt he would be told to drop behind, seeing how Adamo seems to favor manu champ. relative to drivers. Similarly Adamo wouldn't care to drop Breen behind Mikkelsen if he was ahead. Then there are also the options of being 2., 3. or 4th...

  2. #2912
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    Quote Originally Posted by T16 View Post

    "Look at Dani Sordo, he's extended his career brilliantly because he was smart enough to understand to pick his battles. He wasn't going to beat Loeb, so he chose to stay in his job instead."
    The clear comparison there is Duval in the same team. He choose to try to fight Loeb basically from first rally and he lasted one (incomplete) season.

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  4. #2913
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    Quote Originally Posted by T16 View Post
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    Tommi Makinen seethed. Then laughed. But the laugh had that ever so slightly manic edge to it. Makinen, just to be clear, wasn't finding any of this funny.

    From the outside, Toyota has it all: the budget, the boys and the best bits. All is not what it might seem.

    Seven Sundays before that, Ott Tanak was the maniacal one. Understandably. A steering fault - the same one that had hit his three team-mates earlier on Rally Italy - had found its way into his Yaris WRC at the least opportune moment. Just when he was about to celebrate a second Sardinian win in three years and slide into the summer break with a good 25 points between him and his nearest championship rival, the wheel tightened. And he finished fifth.

    Talk to the team about what went on back in Alghero that Sunday night and there is no hint of laughter.

    "Serious business," says one source, lowering his eyes and his tone in a way that makes it clear this particular conversation is done.

    Toyota arrived in Finland last week with massive pressure on it. There was the pressure of proving the steering worked, pressure to make sure the alternator issue didn't return and that the wheels would hold up. All of these technical issues this year have complicated what could - and probably should - have been a very much more straightforward run to back-to-back manufacturers' titles and a maiden drivers' crown for the Yaris project.

    And we're not done with the pressure thing yet. The Yaris WRCs might be re-prepared across the Baltic Sea at a fancy new facility in Tallinn in Estonia, but they were born in Finland. Just up the E75 north of Jyvaskyla in Puuppola.



    For the Finns, this is their car. The home-built dream machine. And, in the current generation of World Rally Cars, it hasn't suffered a home defeat yet.

    Rally Finland is, and always has been, the one everybody wants to win. Yes, Monte Carlo success would be cool and a Safari win showed you had the endurance edge, but the fastest roads of the season always provided an annual opportunity to show who's fastest. Who's bravest.

    If you can't have the title, a Finland win is the next best thing.

    Once you've stood on the top of the Paviljonki podium on Sunday afternoon, nothing else comes close. And you want to do it again.

    Right when Toyota should be coming together and pooling its instinct, speed and resource to realign its title efforts, it looks to be falling back on the more basic human instinct of survival
    Tanak and team-mates Kris Meeke and Jari-Matti Latvala have all stood tall, taller than anybody in that spot, and they all desperately want to do it again.

    In short, and in Scandinavian mythology, Jyvaskyla is rallying's Valhalla. There's the final pound of pressure being applied to Toyota.

    The three racehorses Makinen lined up at the start of the year, guess what? That's right, they all want to race.

    You can't say the four-time champion Makinen wasn't warned. Folk - myself included - were queueing up to ask how he saw 2019 playing out, intrigued to know how this team of three of the world's fastest rally drivers could be shaped into a world championship-winning force.



    Right when Toyota should be coming together and pooling its collective instinct, speed and resource to realign its title efforts, it looks to be falling back on the rather more basic human instinct of survival.

    Time is very much ticking for Latvala and Meeke. Both know they need to perform, both know they have to deliver for Toyota and that didn't happen in Finland. Or it didn't happen for Meeke and just about did happen for Latvala.

    A rock on the outside of a fifth-gear right-hander did for the pair of them. Ironically, Latvala's looked to be the bigger impact after he turned out of the corner to avoid an even bigger rock on the inside. The Finn dropped 14 seconds with a puncture, Meeke broke the suspension, parked up and took Saturday afternoon off.

    Makinen, no longer laughing ironically or otherwise, did little to hide his displeasure and asked when, when, when would either driver ever listen to what they were told...

    "They were told not to chase Ott," he said. "But when they pull on the helmet and they get into the big fight, they forget everything. Somehow their concentration has been disturbed and, unfortunately, it's not the first time this year."

    Meeke hadn't helped his own cause by getting to the end of the previous test, Paijala - one of his favourites - fastest and talking about the fight going on.



    Here's the tricky bit. Before Paijala, Meeke was only a tenth of a second up on Citroen's Esapekka Lappi. And to put into context just how close the battle was, Lappi was only 2.3s off the lead. How could Meeke back off?

    The last thing Toyota wanted was a Finnish-French interloper ruining the perfect symmetry of a three-Yaris podium.

    It's very easy in hindsight to dissect how Meeke and Latvala got it wrong. But they did. As Makinen said, they chased Tanak. That was never the plan
    Ten and a half minutes up the road and with Paijala done, Meeke was 6.5s ahead of Lappi. On a rally where we're told 10s is the equivalent of 20s or even 30s elsewhere (simply because the high-speed nature of terrain means the cars are all running at similar pace without junctions or slow corners to make up time under braking or at the apex), was six seconds the start of a margin?

    Certainly, Lappi had never been further behind the Toyotas than he was coming out of SS13 and you only had to watch the C3 to see how hard he was going to make those times.

    Did Makinen make that call to Meeke and Latvala? Did he remind them of the plan? Should he have had to? Between the two of them they've started more than 300 rounds of the world championship - they knew the plan. They knew what had to be done. But they chose to chase the win.



    Were Meeke reading this story - which he doesn't anymore - he wouldn't be reading it anymore. He'd have thrown his phone out of the window.

    "What!" he would have cried. "What? I'm six tenths of a second off the lead at Rally Finland and he's asking me if I'm going to fight for the win?"

    Add in a bunch of expletives and watch the phone fly.

    And it's very easy to sit here in hindsight and dissect how he and Latvala got it wrong. But they did. Like Makinen said, they chased Tanak. And that was never the plan.

    Now, six seconds ahead of the man ahead or six tenths behind the leader, those two are professional drivers, Toyota employees with a job to do. Whether they like it or not, when their line manager gives them an instruction, they have to comply.

    One of the more astute voices in the service park put it into context.

    "I don't understand Kris and Jari-Matti," the source said. "It's like they don't see what the rest of us can clearly see.

    "Tanak is in the right place right now. It happens every once in a while with a driver. It was [Sebastien] Ogier's time in the Volkswagen and for [Sebastien] Loeb it was the [Citroen] Xsara or C4. Now it's Tanak.

    "When a driver comes to this kind of form, it stretches everybody - but this is where your team-mates have to be smart.



    "Look at Dani Sordo, he's extended his career brilliantly because he was smart enough to understand to pick his battles. He wasn't going to beat Loeb, so he chose to stay in his job instead."

    Meeke's a vastly intelligent chap. He's an engineer. But above that he's an absolute lionheart of a driver who leaves nothing in the locker and puts everything on the line.

    It's not like we haven't seen him play the percentages. He started his season beautifully and was building great momentum when Portugal happened and he threw away a podium.

    It's vital he turns that around in the next five rallies. He has to.

    The current thinking is Tanak will stay where he is next season and with Kalle Rovanpera joining Toyota, that leaves one Yaris left.

    On Sunday afternoon, following Meeke's second off, sources in the service park said Meeke and Latvala were both gone at the end of the year. Let's see. There's time yet for both to make a case for that seat. But only just.

    Much as they both see victory bringing redemption, they have to stop driving for themselves and focus on the team's bigger picture.

    And now, more than ever, is the time for Makinen and the Toyota team management to rigorously impose themselves. Tanak's title tilt must take priority among the drivers. The Estonian has to be given every resource and backed at every turn just in case the manufacturers' title heads east to Hyundai's base in Seoul at the end of the season.
    What's the point of this article. Did Toyota not nearly score maximum points? Only 2 can score. That's why they run 3 drivers.

  5. #2914
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    Quote Originally Posted by Allez Andruet View Post
    “I don’t understand why they don’t listen. I think Kris might be confused, somehow, about the overall situation. Yesterday’s (Saturday’s) mistake and everything generally, maybe he is confused. Maybe he was thinking of something else while he was driving.”

    So what was he thinking then? What is the "overall situation" that's left Kris "confused".
    I'm guessing, but if Rovenpera has a seat at Toyota and it leaves only one remaining, even though they were both told not to fight with Tanak, given how close they were Kris possibly thought by showing he is faster than Tanak at the fastest rally he would be more likely to keep his seat next year, when the reality is if he plays the team game better than Jarri Matti instead of trying to prove his speed, which isn't in doubt, he would be more likely to keep his job.

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  7. #2915
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    Quote Originally Posted by Norm75 View Post
    I'm guessing, but if Rovenpera has a seat at Toyota and it leaves only one remaining, even though they were both told not to fight with Tanak, given how close they were Kris possibly thought by showing he is faster than Tanak at the fastest rally he would be more likely to keep his seat next year, when the reality is if he plays the team game better than Jarri Matti instead of trying to prove his speed, which isn't in doubt, he would be more likely to keep his job.
    Or maybe Kris already knows that he is out of job next year and tried to impress other teambosses...

  8. #2916
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    Quote Originally Posted by eib1 View Post
    Or maybe Kris already knows that he is out of job next year and tried to impress other teambosses...
    But it's the same with everyone else. Nobody doubts his speed for the last 3+ years. Everyone doubts his reliability.

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  10. #2917
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    yes, but every win raises your fragile cv

  11. #2918
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    Quote Originally Posted by eib1 View Post
    yes, but every win raises your fragile cv
    IT does, but maybe he needs to have a chat with his mate Dani, who has two wins to his name but a much longer career.

  12. #2919
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    Quote Originally Posted by mknight View Post
    But it's the same with everyone else. Nobody doubts his speed for the last 3+ years. Everyone doubts his reliability.
    Maybe, Meeke just loves to drive a WRC car as fast as possible, and probably getting well paid doing it.

    People will remember Kris Meeke, they'll not remember mknight.

  13. #2920
    Senior Member Allez Andruet's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wrc2017 View Post
    Maybe, Meeke just loves to drive a WRC car as fast as possible, and probably getting well paid doing it.

    People will remember Kris Meeke, they'll not remember mknight.
    Go to sleep Kris.
    ku ois neljä pyörää ku vetäis ni ois vähän eri sekunnit kyllä pätkillä, sen mä takaan

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