Quote Originally Posted by Mirek View Post
You're talking rubbish. Mikkelsen and Kopecký were both doing the whole championship and they both did all events. Kopecký did better in the season than Mikkelsen but Mikkelsen won by 1,5 points thanks to the rules which gave higher coefficient to the last two gravel events and due to the fact that the worst three events didn't count. This rule meant that Mikkelsen got away with 3 crashes without any point loss while Kopecký lost 27 points which simply didn't count.
Nah you seem to be a bit confused.

Mikkelsen was a Skoda UK driver, a team funded by the British importer and run by an Italian team. Not a part of the factory team, which was Jan and Juho. Mikkelsen was a huge huge outside bet for the championship up to the last round.

I'm talking about Skoda being so desperate for their own Czech driver to win the series, that they restricted Juho when he could've blitzed the series and taken back to back IRC titles. But they pissed about and neither driver won the title. Juho was by far the fastest driver on most of the rounds he entered, dominating Monte till the snow came and the bad tyre choice, winning Canaries, Yalta and Azores and taking 3rd in Barum, before having his entry pulled for Sanremo at the last minute - despite being on the entry list.

They gave Jan the whole season to get the job done and clinch the title, but Hanninen was needed as insurance policy for them as Kopecky wasn't convincing. Then Juho got drafted back in for the last two rounds after missing Sanremo. But he initilally struggled in the wet conditions in Scotland compared to 2010 and made a mistake in Cyprus, while Mikkelsen dominated both events and took the title. Leaving Skoda motorsport without one of their two contracted drivers winning the series. Kopecky finished runner up for the third time in the series. They wanted him to win that title, when giving Juho one or two extra events probably would've meant back to back titles for him. But they wanted Jan to win IRC and for Juho to have his SWRC crown. It was obvious at the time.