Quote Originally Posted by steve.mandzij View Post
I might (likely) be overreacting as a Latvala fan, but I wouldn't be surprised if Tommi is looking to cause a little turmoil in the team to force his dreams into reality.
He's just stating a fact mate. Tanak being so much faster than Jari is becoming the norm, but the team were probably surprised how much faster Meeke was. Jari still did a job for the team though and at least brought the car home with a solid points haul.

In terms of talking publicly, it was Jari who was spouting some amount of gibberish all weekend. He was so up and down and contradicting himself after nearly every stage.

- Saying he didn't have a good feeling on the first few stages - and we know when Jari doesn't have a good feeling his times plummet.

- On Saturday morning on the first stage, said he had a really good feeling and was happy with his driving - when in fact he'd been beaten by both his team mates by 24s.

- Said at the end of Saturday that he's pleased Sundays stages are dry, as he has confidence in the car on the dry as most of his testing was in those conditions.

- On Sundays first loop, says his car is too soft and that explains the time loss. Then after the second loop says the car is too hard (or it was too hard first, then too soft).

- Then after the rally saying he built the car wrong, it was his fault for crashing in testing. And because of that his setup was wrong (even though on Saturday night he claimed he was happy and comfortable with the car in the dry from testing).

So he needs to just settle down a bit. Still solid points, and a long season ahead. In Sweden things will probably change, Meeke has not much experience there and has never gone well, whereas Jari is the total opposite. And Jari has a better road position compared to Ott, which could even it up between those two.
If Jari is already having a mental breakdown and doing a you by worrying about Meeke, Kalle, katsuta and Makinen's future plans for the team, he'd be as well just packing in the season now and calling Malcolm .
Being Toyota's consitent points scorer could be just what Makinen wants from him anyway, as Meeke probably isn't going to be that....

He had a good second half of last season and was relaxed and calm, it's a shame he can't bring that into a new season. Nothing has changed except Meeke replacing Lappi, and if that alone is making him go back to being unstable then that's not Makinen's fault.