Mads Ostberg

[Antony Warmbold]

During 2012 we were judging him as a privateer, when he never tried to push the big boys. He was always the best of the rest, and back then we had 4 factory cars, now 8. Probably when trying to step up a gear he lost his way a bit and a little bit his mojo, especially after the first half of 2013 when one problem was coming after another.
I believe Mads lacks the ability to properly setup the car, a lot of times he complains about the car's behaviour but never really knows what is wrong with it. It will be nice to see him progress and challenge Latvala, Ogier but I doubt it will happen

Interesting comment.

The systematic complaining about setup once the rally has started could be another hint that the notes are not up to par.

If Mads drives the car to the limit on tests (where he knows the road by heart) and sets the car up for that particular level of attack, that is one thing.

Then during the rally if he lacks confidence with notes and therefore there's not enough commitment, that car's setup is going to give him feedback like : understeer, too hard suspension, precision problem with steering, etc.

His engineers, if they are reading this...lol...could tell us if that's indeed the sort of talk they hear from him.

If the notes are indeed his problem, it would mean the ability to set-up the car is no issue in his case.

I'd like to analyze his notes a bit and compare to Loeb's which I understand quite well. If any Norwegian forumer could help out it would be great!


Loeb had for example:

1. distances between every corner unless really unuseful.

2. A corner system based on the shape of corners in degrees: ie. "droite 140" (meant a 140 degree corner) It's a typical french system which came from the good old days when they had scotch tape marks on the steering wheels, in recce, they would turn the wheel and get a quick measure by eye of how pronounced the corner was.

3. braking points: ie. "140 metres cuvette FREIN pour 40 mètres droite 140 moins court" (140 meters Braking at the dip and 40 meters right 140° short)

4. very precise braking points in corners: ie. "gauche 143 FREIN pour droite 90 (BRAKING left 140° over a disance of 30 meters until right 90°)

4. racing line precision: court, mi-long, long, corde, pas corde, corde légère, tard (short, half-long, long, keep-in, keep-out, keep-in a bit, late

5. speed precision: plus, moins, (plus, minus)

6. corners that tighten very precisely: ie. droite 145 FERME 110 pas corde (right 140° during 50 meters then tightens to right 110° keep out)

7. "et" or "sur": "et" (and) is used to go from right to left or vice versa. "sur" is used to go from left into left o right into right.

...

and there's lots of fine details like that which make it all very precise.


So please if a Swede or Norwegian could check Mads's notes and come back with info on what his co-river reads out that would be really great.

thanks!!