Quote Originally Posted by Mirek View Post
Maybe because he is good? Look, Ogier managed to win his very first WRC stage in his his very first 4WD outing on the first stage of the event (Sweet Lamb 2008)! Before he only drove two seasons in French 206XS cup and one season in JWRC. Nothing else. It may look unbelievable but it's true. That stage was even icy mud if I remmeber so even one of the hardest conditions what You can imagine.

About Your old cars. You can take also opposite examples. For example Belgian Didier Vanwijnsberghe. He is bloody fast with Escort Mk.II but even after two seasons he didn't manage to drive Fabia S2000 faster than his Escort so he sold it and continues with the Escort. There are more similar examples. The point is that it's perfectly irrelevant how fast somebody would be with 40 years old car. It's about how fast they are now.

From what I have read of Loeb he grew up driving on muddy, and snowy roads--with crap tires...Here in North America--although on a vastly different scale some of the guys up in Quebec in Canada are shockingly (relatively) fast on snow and especially ice (no studs then)...that's what they drive on 6 months of the year. and of course they are all absolute lunatics whenever they drive anywhere.

And true confessions when I was building that nice Ford Sierra Cosworth 4x4 that sits over <-------there next to my beloved old Saab I often wondered how results would go...what i wondered was "was I at my limit? Would I have higher Overall results? I had done some 3rd and 4th and 5th Overall with an ancient --but light and built bigger engineand freer spec than old WRC spec Saab----logically it sure seemed like I should go faster (and tests seemed to back that up) or was that speed what I could do?"

I only use Escort because as Paddon showed so well it is a simple car that has no real vices and is capable of an outright win even against a whole field of turbo 4wd cars.. It is FAST....if driven right.
Still.