Quote Originally Posted by mknight View Post
Well he was driving wrc with Skoda in 2005-2007. Won some stages in Germany as well even though final result wasnt very good. On gravel he was always slower than his teammates though (Paasonen etc.). So when Skoda left WRC his performance wasnt anything that would make other teams pick him and he didnt have money to pay for the drive. So he stuck with Skoda for IRC and then R5 slowly going better on gravel. He is now decent on it, but decent means somewhere around 8-9 place in WRC given competitive car. On tarmac he could be around 4-5th depending on the rally.
I'd like to correct You a little bit. He drove only one single gravel event for Škoda Motorsport when he was 21 years old (Wales 2003). It wasn't fast but that could be hardly expected with his experience. 2005 was the last season before the Škoda Motorsport department was dissolved and in these years he drove only few selected asphalt events.

In 2006-2007 he drove privately run WRC car with no teammate. The team was run by his father and it actually somehow exists till today. They keep preparing Jan's car for Czech national events. Take into account that the development of the car was very limited despite Škoda actually granting homologation to number of improvements developed by the team. The main problem was pretty weak obsolete 20V engine of the Fabia WRC especially in terms of torque where it was lacking around 100-200 Nm against the competitors. He did only selected events and scored some good results considering he was a privateer (5th in Germany and Catalunya, 7th in Acropolis and Corsica, 8th in Finland, Monte Carlo and Norway).

In 2008 Škoda Motorsport was reborn and the development of the Fabia S2000 was ongoing. Jan was doing a lot of the job including collecting experience with other S2000 (207, Punto). He also drove the S2000 prototype on number of events. In 2009 Škoda entered IRC on Monte Carlo. IRC was very popular in that time and the competition was made largely of today's WRC drivers. If I'm not mistaken Jan finished 3x 2nd in the all season standings (behind Hänninen and Mikkelsen). He also drove in Italian championship for Škoda Italia. After that he was sent to win ERC which he did and to win APRC which he also did (fun fact - Lappi didn't manage that). And further You know it. He is taking mandatory Czech titles and drive what he is given in WRC2. He was very close to a WRC deal two years back but everything collapsed when VW stopped and its drivers got in the game. Now it's too late I would say. He won 4 major gravel events - 2x Sardinia in WRC2, Acores and Sibiu in IRC/ERC.