Quote Originally Posted by Rally Power View Post
To say that Suninen was trounced by Camilli in Germany is quite an overstatement. Despite the tarmac experience difference, Suninen was only 9s behind Camilli at the end of leg 1. He got 2 punctures during leg 2 and after recovering to P4 he did a mistake in one of Sunday’s stages, getting stuck on a ditch for over 1m. Looking at his trouble free SS times (and the Corsica ones, btw) we can only praise his tarmac speed improvement. He’s now on his 3rd WRC2 season and was always one of the fastest there, plus he was astonishingly impressive on his WRC first outings; he’s more than ready to be in WRC next year.
99% of the time punctures are the drivers fault. So using that as an excuse for coming 7th in WRC2 is not realistic. Regardless of how well you perform in a super special, if you can't keep it on the road for a whole rally, then you have room to improve.

Hence I believe he still has room to improve to be a more balanced driver, not necessarily a faster driver, just better at managing the risks, then he will be ready for a WRC seat. Otherwise I fear for him that he will just become another Novikov or Camilli. Lots of balls, and some big bills.