Quote Originally Posted by AL14 View Post
I wouldn't be that confident. They have 18 months and VW is beginning testing the car soon. They had the advantage to focus fully on testing new cars and due to plan changes in the middle of the project they are already behind.
We should have read articles like "Toyota is testing new 2017 car" before VW and other manufacturers but now what we are reading is that Makkinen is desperately building a team and still don't know where all the work will be done and so on.
Not a good start for a team that want to beat the best car with the best driver.
BTW, I still hope they will bring excitement as you say, they can make a miracle in these 18 months and we all need it.

Regarding Citroen. I hope they will go away and Abu Dhabi goes back to M-Sport. It's better to have 4 strong manufacturers than 5 if some of them are always trying to spend less money every year.
I do agree but not with the Citroen part... Every WRC team that leaves is a waste of mileage opportunies for young talent, there has to be a stepping stone, better from poor WRC team to top class WRC team than from WRC2, you need to adapt driving style and pace notes to high WRC level. In that given situation a young driver can be rated by the big teams to be interesting or a failure/don't bother.