Quote Originally Posted by cali View Post
I was just wondering if you guessed this notepace theory or you were having inside information. You guessed and IMHO your guess was not far off. Estonian drivers are using very simple pacenotes as what I have seen in onboards. On estonian high speed and flowing roads these pacenotes are quite OK, but on more demanding roads it could have some negative impact on speed....

Everything else seems to be spot on in you analysis about Tänaks current state.

Sent from my ONE E1003 using Tapatalk
Rally drivers that come from countries that have very flowing/fast stages often have lower detailed pace notes in some areas than those that do rallying on more technical stages.
Finland, Estonia, New Zealand are three such countries. (Norway another one.)

Hayden Paddon is also a driver that needs to work on his pace notes.
For him I dont think it has to do with not taking it seriously enough, because he seems to have an athletes take on it, and that he practises and analyses a lot (inc pace notes), but for technical rallies they lack some important info.
You see this also in the typical Finnish driver, that they struggle when the pace notes could have helped You drive smart - in stead of only balls out all the time.
Tänak´s issue is more serious than Paddon and "the typical Finn", because he struggles with the fact that he has never done enough work on the pace notes, and finding the right codriver, and maybe never really understood the importance of constant analysing, consent grinding away on details, because he has been naturally fast - and things have come maybe a little to easy to him.

Some Norwegian friends visited the VW team in the S2000 time of Ogier and Mikkelsen. And they reported back that they just knew Ogier was going to be unbeatable. He was already the fastest, but still he was just constantly working, looking at inboards etc etc, and putting in the hours.
When the best out there does the most homework, he will be very difficult to catch.

I think all the Young and up comming talents needs to understand how hard they have to work to beat Ogier:
- Remember how incredibly hard he have worked on his driving/pace notes etc.
- Remember that he in the outset was so talented that he beat several thousand other hopefuls in the Auto de Junes.
So You got Your work cut out!

Its off course not impossible, but start by analysing what Ogier and Loeb actually do.
- How they drive.
- Why they "never" have accidents.
- How few mistakes they make.
- Where they make up speed.
Because as long as You have a descent driving talent, a lot of these things can actually be learned. But You need to be on the one hand open minded, and on the other hand very critical. And remember - the laws of physics are the same for everybody!