Quote Originally Posted by RS View Post
Not sure whether 'best in second tier WRC competition' or best in Europe sounds better to be honest.

Mikelssen, Meeke and Neuville didn't have the 2-3 years you talk about, although the first two had some previous experience of WRC stages. On the other hand what WRC2 driver has progressed to a works drive? Paddon is maybe their biggest success story.
Come on, Meeke has been around since 2004 or so. He has done a lot of WRC events already in JWRC. You can't take him for a newcomer ten years later. Mikkelsen has had a lot of WRC starts already before he went to IRC and right now he finished the 4th post-IRC season (the first one was with VW Fabia S2000). Neuville did JERC in the same time as IRC (plus some single rounds of WRC in previous years) and now he finished his 4th complete WRC season.

Together these guys spent more then 15 seasons in WRC and they managed to win how many times? Each one of them once? They are good and they definitely benefited from being part of the IRC show in its strongest days but still they didn't come as something groundbraking to the WRC. Still we talk about times when they had to fight with those like Hänninen, Kopecký, Loix, Rossetti etc. but all of those guys left ERC...