Silly Season 2019

[mknight]

But honestly, Makinen can sit there and say he's got the majority of decisions right in the last few years. They got a podium on their first ever event, won the 2nd event in Sweden and saw Jari help develop that Yaris so much over the winter before Monte Carlo. Jari was up there in the championship and would've been towards the end of last season if it wasn't for the technical problems in Poland and Finland, so clearly they haven't regretted signing him. Makinen again mentioned in yesterday's press release about the great work Latvala has done for the team.

So I think Tommi now deserves the benefit of the doubt. His team lead the manufacturers by a decent margin at this stage, he's signed and helped further develop Tanak into the fastest WRC driver (imo), and as he really wants Meeke, who are any of us to argue with this signing. He clearly knows what he's doing and how he wants to run his team, and he clearly looks for certain things in his drivers.

For most things we can only guess what would have happened with other decisions. But to automatically assume it would be worse is wrong.

At end of 2016 they could get Ogier to drive and develop the car instead of Latvala. Seemingly he turned them down, but it also seems that Tommi did not really want him and for some reason also let him test the car on wet tarmac where it was far from ready (on purpose?). Tommi said as much himself. Why not let him test in Finland where the car was driving all the time? Would it get better with Ogier instead of Latvala? Possibly yes, but we will never know.

Mikkelsen was clearly faster than Latvala in same car in 2016 and got better results too. How would it go if he was there instead of Latvala? We will never know. Certainly hard to judge based on I20 experience where he came into a "developed" car with drivers that have been in the team for multiple years.

Similarly while getting Tanak certainly got them one fast driver, it also looks like it got Lappi to leave (if indirectly) and Latvala is back to his 2016 VW style (clearly 2nd and on half events even 3rd driver in the team with lots of confidence issues). Again Ogier was seemingly available at end of 2017, but it looked like they didn't even show real interest. If he joined instead of Tanak maybe they would have won both titles by now.... or maybe they would have no chance of either, again impossible to know.

Anyway they are charging for both titles now so can't say that he made very bad decisions and in the end results (and championships) are the only thing that matter to the outside.