You really have no idea.
Quote Originally Posted by mknight View Post
That is all well and true all the way down to Argentina after first crash....
At that point it was clear that the car can be fast, it was also clear that it probably had some issues and a change of approach was needed. The second crash in Argentina and the crashes in Portugal and Sardinia did nothing except add a huge repair bill. What's more in Sardinia Matton specifically told Meeke to finish at a comfortable pace.

But at that point Meeke was very much trapped in his own trap. [speculation] He tried to show that he can be fast with the car even though he did not agree with the engineers, by doing that, they refused to change stuff cause why change the car when it's winning rallies [/speculation].
=> Perfect self-trap from Meeke. If he would slow down they would ask "why are you not winning stages when you could in Mexico and lead in other rallies".

So yes in hindsight it seems there was no real choice for him but to keep on pushing at that point.


The only other option would have been to be slow from the start and keep on arguing that the car is not driveable (we have seen that on the onboard in Sweden). But I guess that starting in a lead in Mexico due to start position + overheating issues of other cars just did not let him do that.

On a side note, Mikkelsen crawling around in Sardinia (finally) convinced Citroen to start changing the car, but it's totally not certain that Meeke doing that in Mexico would have had the same effect. After Mexico and Corsica pace it was too late.