Silly Season 2008

[I am evil Homer]

That's what's wrong with the WRC - only 2 C4's in action. Look at the Focus, there were about 8 on Rally GB, don't Citroen build that many or have a customer program?

No idea...it took a while for Xsara's to get to Kronos but you'd think selling older chassis C4's, esp as they'll develop the C4 over the winter, would be snapped up by people and help pay back some of the investment.

I'd truly love a Red Bull C4 team with Aigner and Wilks at the wheel! But I can't see anyone getting them. Even Kronos aren't...so really that leaves PH (no idea on plans) with strong Citroen connections.

[miksu]

The problem is i belive that Toni is quite old as rallydriver, not anymore an investment, i dont belive Jouhki is putting money out on him anymore, it time to collect what there is to collect, therefore Toni to Suzuki and JM to Ford.

true, but he's also at his peak at the moment, i think. So if he doesnt get a seat from a top team now, then probably not ever. But i know, its not very likely at the moment.
JM in a other hand wouldnt suffer so much from a another year in second team. He is still learning and taking huge steps when looking at performance, in every rally and has time to score a top seat in a future too.

[Tomi]

true, but he's also at his peak at the moment, i think. So if he doesnt get a seat from a top team now, then probably not ever. But i know, its not very likely at the moment.
JM in a other hand wouldnt suffer so much from a another year in second team. He is still learning and taking huge steps when looking at performance, in every rally and has time to score a top seat in a future too.

Yes but i belive the second seat at Ford atleast for the first year is not free either, JM will do the same job Garde would do, finnish before the other second drivers on gravel and desant result on tarmac.

[rus]

Mikko, Jari-Matti, Garde, (Marcus,...); firstly it's nice to see these Finnish or Scandinavian (Petter, Henning,...) drivers doing so well and have the opportunity to drive in the WRC but is it really healthy for the top level of rallying? Can it keep intrest for the rest of the world? I think we need Galli, Duval, Kopecky, Wilks, Atko, etc to keep it alive and exciting for the diversity of the drivers but unfortunately, in my opinion, 2008 announces a big disappointment on the intrest-level.
Again, i'm not against Scandinavia, on the contrary, I'm just wondering...

[Tomi]

Mikko, Jari-Matti, Garde, (Marcus,...); firstly it's nice to see these Finnish or Scandinavian (Petter, Henning,...) drivers doing so well and have the opportunity to drive in the WRC but is it really healthy for the top level of rallying? Can it keep intrest for the rest of the world? I think we need Galli, Duval, Kopecky, Wilks, Atko, etc to keep it alive and exciting for the diversity of the drivers but unfortunately, in my opinion, 2008 announces a big disappointment on the intrest-level.
Again, i'm not against Scandinavia, on the contrary, I'm just wondering...

yes true it would be better, wilks and kopecky is trying to build a carreer atko is in wrc, galli has had many chances and duval too, for some reason the teams dont seem to want their services, maybe they dont understand what working in a team means or maybe it's the results or something else, but the fact is that the teams does the final desition about who drives, and thats good.

[MikeD]

Mikko, Jari-Matti, Garde, (Marcus,...); firstly it's nice to see these Finnish or Scandinavian (Petter, Henning,...) drivers doing so well and have the opportunity to drive in the WRC but is it really healthy for the top level of rallying? Can it keep intrest for the rest of the world? I think we need Galli, Duval, Kopecky, Wilks, Atko, etc to keep it alive and exciting for the diversity of the drivers but unfortunately, in my opinion, 2008 announces a big disappointment on the intrest-level.
Again, i'm not against Scandinavia, on the contrary, I'm just wondering...

I think you are right. One of the reasons that Rally will never be as big as F1, is clearly down to a few nations dominating the sport. But what can you do?

The same goes for MotoGP. It's a World Championship on paper, but people call it the Italian and Spanish national championship.

For some reason F1 has managed to be more global.

[Tom206wrc]

Any idea of program for Daniel Carlsson next year ??

[Koppomsbo]

Any idea of program for Daniel Carlsson next year ??

He has been talking in newspapers here in sweden about some S2000 teams but nothing serious

[A.F.F.]

Mikko, Jari-Matti, Garde, (Marcus,...); firstly it's nice to see these Finnish or Scandinavian (Petter, Henning,...) drivers doing so well and have the opportunity to drive in the WRC but is it really healthy for the top level of rallying? Can it keep intrest for the rest of the world? I think we need Galli, Duval, Kopecky, Wilks, Atko, etc to keep it alive and exciting for the diversity of the drivers but unfortunately, in my opinion, 2008 announces a big disappointment on the intrest-level.
Again, i'm not against Scandinavia, on the contrary, I'm just wondering...

Spot on. One (unrealistic) way to fix that would be more manufacturers, hence more seats for drivers.

[jonkka]

international rally program for Toni Gardemeister in season 2008 is going to be published in the middle of December.

Which happens to co-incide with the time table Wilson gave for Ford's announcements... then again, it'd be interesting if Ford would take him back after dropping him after 2005...