Quote Originally Posted by Mirek View Post
Kopeckı is strongly connected with Škoda and will stay there. Anyway he is an asphalt specialist who isn't that fast on gravel (and even sometimes on wet or very dirty asphalt). His problem is also that he doesn't drive WRC events so he doesn't know them. He is too old for any team to buy him a learning season or two. On the other hand it's not true that Mikkelsen is clearly better. When both had absolutely same cars Mikkelsen beat Kopeckı in IRC 2011 only due to special IRC rules. With WRC point-scoring system Kopeckı would clearly win (only 8 of 12 events counted plus double points from the last rally). 2012 Kopeckı did only half of the events Mikkelsen did.
It isn't bad that he is staying with Škoda, but I really hope he can do than a good ERC programme with the Fabia R5 in the next years. Not only the Barum Rally, but a fight for the ERC championship. This year he is doing the Asia Pacific championship, but only a few people are following this championship. I know that this market is very important for Škoda, but maybe they can give more support to Gaurav Gill and than let Kopeckı drive in the ERC 2015.

I don't think that Kopeckı is too old for WRC. Meeke and Bouffier are 3 years older and gets a chance this year and Hänninen is a bit older than Kopeckı too. All this drivers had little experience in the WRC in world rally cars before this year.