Rallye Deutschland 2014

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Just looked at the Pickems - in 7 pages of entries only 4 people predicted a Latvala win ...

Are those minority geniuses going to be right ?

His very first tarmac win & consecutive WRC victories, or will the old JML return to throw it away ?

Fascinating weekend ahead !

[Criterium]

Thanks to rallyVista, it is possible to view the place where Ogier went off (at 7.2km exiting from Sauer Brunnen wood), the little road he followed and its end.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Ogier with just light damage - lucky boy...



Better than last year here:

[Miika]

Ogier off on Friday, rain on Saturday. If there is a pile of wood with JML´s name on it then it´ll be a complete rerun of the 2013 edition.

[dimviii]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bD9kQRD8dQ borl day1

[makinen_fan]

VW recap with Ogier crash/recovery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cOq...ature=youtu.be

[Criterium]

Should he turn to the left instead of following the stage direction, could he reach it at a previous point in less than 10 minutes...


http://www.interactiveinfluence.com/...lyvista/rally/

[makinen_fan]

Ogier off on Friday, rain on Saturday. If there is a pile of wood with JML´s name on it then it´ll be a complete rerun of the 2013 edition.

+a Citroen winning for the 12th time...

I hope Latvala keeps it on the road, it will be interesting for the rest of the championship

[dimviii]

Kubica crash incar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bD9kQRD8dQ

[Lundefaret]

From Bouffier should be expected much more on tarmac.... and he is in factory car I believe. But his performance seem to reflect his current situation "in the middle of nowhere".

From Evans I personally expect much more next year when he should begin to fight for something, now he is learning the Rallies as he says many times, so we should just wait and see.

Quite odd Ogier to make major mistakes in Germany 2 consecutive years, I guess this Rally doesn't suit him well.

I dont think, stefanvv, that You can compare Germany to any other tarmac event.
The factors that really made Loeb stand out are the most important factors of this rally, and that is the "retention vs investing" strategy, where to go slow to be fast etc.
This is because You have the combination of contrasting grip (from very high to very low level), in critical places (where You want to change direction of the mass at speed (the rally car)), and extreme contrasts in speed from high to low to high again. (Read: a lot of hairpins and junctions.) If one was to take out three aspects that Loeb was an absolute master of, it would be these three. No wonder he won year after year after year.
I have never seen anything like that with Bouffier, so I did not expect him to go particalarly well here, and I dont think its fair to expect it either.

Regarding Evans I think my friend N.O.T (sic) put it correctly when he talks about the Wilson/Varmbold way of no progression. Tough I think his performance here so far actually has been a little positive, he must not get stuck in the "Wilson rut". Malcolm Wilson is a master of running a motorsport business, and I personally admire him for that, but even tough he him self drove at a reasonable level, he is not very knowledgable on developing talent, something the story of Mathew Wilson is a testament of, so he should either employ someone who is, or the Evans family should. From my very limited knowledge about Evans, he seems like a very eager driver who understands the time and effort he needs to put in, but he havent found the right people to give him the knowledge yet. So its still hope

And, to disagree with You on the final point also - to make my day complete (hope You have a sence og humor). No, it is not odd that Ogier makes a mistake in Germany for the second year running, its symptomatic to the way he drives. I have written about this earlier, but (fortunally, or he would even more), Ogier has greater cracks in his armour than Loeb did.
And its my mistake for not taking this enough in account when I wrote the first analyzis,but it was only based on the testing videos, tough I got my act togheter when I saw how this was panning out.
Ogier has weaknesses, and they are quit easy to spot. The only problem is, every other current driver in the WRC have more weaknesses, wich are even easier to spot, so in the title chase Ogier is still quit safe.