Silly Season 2020

[mknight]

no I don't believe Kalle will be much slower than Lappi was in 2017.

Thing is if you take Lappi's results and form from 2017 as a rule it would place him as last WRC this year. Lappi had great start with 4th in Italy and then winning Finland after Latvala's ECU issues and multiple crashes from other top runners. After that reality settled in and he was way behind and making mistakes rest of the season.

[deephouse]

Lappi didn't even drive the whole season back then in 2017. Kale will if he will be 3rd driver (Makinen don't want to share cars). Toyota didn't expect something big back then. They had one fast and experienced driver, one test guy and a learning boy. After few good results they lift their goals and sign promising Tanak and straight away lift their goals even higher after winning manufacturer title in their second year and driver title in their 3rd. Now it's quite pressure there to instant deliver results, so Kale will be under pressure and not trying to drive his own race to gain experience. What if one or two of other guys hit the trouble. I mean whatever as long as Katsuta don't get permanent seat instead of bunch of available guys.

[Allez Andruet]

https://www.hs.fi/urheilu/art-2000006316294.html

Ari Pusa, long-time Finnish journalist and author of the now postponed Mäkinen autobiography, writes that according to his sources Lappi is indeed on his way to M-Sport for 2020.

The story also claims that Toyota actually exercised the buy-out clause in Ogier's contract.

[mknight]

It also says that Citroen will continue paying Lappi's salary at MSport. In that case it's quite easy to choose him for MSport considering their business model.

So the remaining questions would be
- will Toyota get some other experiened driver as 3rd car while Rovanpera drives 4th
- will MSport get some other driver than Greensmith (and possibly run Greensmith on a few rallies on his own budget)

[EstWRC]

this had to be done (not mine)

[AnttiL]

https://www.hs.fi/urheilu/art-2000006316294.html

Ari Pusa, long-time Finnish journalist and author of the now postponed Mäkinen autobiography, writes that according to his sources Lappi is indeed on his way to M-Sport for 2020.

The story also claims that Toyota actually exercised the buy-out clause in Ogier's contract.

Quite many errors in the article.

- Citroen should pay fine for quitting WRC before 2022 (Timo Rautiainen just said in another interview that you only need to commit to one year at a time)
- Lorenzo Bertelli looking for a factory seat (he has his own car)
- WRC2 could be the main class in 2022 (hybrid rules have been agreed)
- ERC is attractive to private manufacturers (what are these?)

[Allez Andruet]

Quite many errors in the article.

- Citroen should pay fine for quitting WRC before 2022 (Timo Rautiainen just said in another interview that you only need to commit to one year at a time)
- Lorenzo Bertelli looking for a factory seat (he has his own car)
- WRC2 could be the main class in 2022 (hybrid rules have been agreed)
- ERC is attractive to private manufacturers (what are these?)

Yep, I noticed the same. Rautiainen didn't sound like he was 100% sure about the "quitting penalty" though.

[Allez Andruet]

https://www.iltalehti.fi/ralli/a/f51...4-97df930b4844

The latest from Don Timo Jouhki. To quote a former Finnish rally driver, there's "nothing special", but anyway. It's not really a surprise that Jouhki says that for Latvala "things don't look that good". Jouhki doubts Lappi would just walk in to M-Sport like that, but then again it's not actually any of his business. Jouhki believes that Meeke "won't do anything (in 2020)" and Breen will continue with Hyundai (few rallies with WRC + R5 development).

I think the most interesting part was that according to Jouhki "it's quite obvious it's either Jari-Matti or Meeke, who does not get anything from Toyota - atleast more than few rallies". Could it be that there's still room in the occasional fourth car in rallies Katsuta doesn't do?

[deephouse]

They could keep both of them, share third car, Kale and Katsuta share 4th. Simple.

[EstWRC]

its Kalle* man


Kale is this dude