Quote Originally Posted by Mirek View Post
Comparing with Loeb is also tricky. New team, not only a new car but a car built with different philosophy, very little testing (consider that Loeb always worked only with Citroën and French before). The fact he went to the event nearly directly from two weeks of very physically demanding Dakar sure also played a role, especially because Loeb isn't young anymore (it was also on the other side of the Globe).
Loeb did quite good considering all this. He did have 2 days of testing, that's what most drivers get ahead of each event, only Ogier and all Toyotas had more. Sure some testing to "get to know the car" would help. That said he had quite good speed on mixed conditions with varying tyrechoices (that comes down to his experience), on the dry, simple, wide parts of stages (and SD) he was competing with Suninen. That's Loeb the tarmac king that just won Spain and was top 3 fast on Corsica.

Personally I was expecting him something like half way between Neuville and Mikkelsen on pace, instead he was even with Mikkelsen, but I definitely didn't think that he will be loosing so much time on the "simple" parts.

This is why Neuville is so extremely happy even after loosing the win:
1. Loeb was much slower than him (people even on this forum saying how Loeb will easily beat Neuville and will win both Monte and Sweden....)
2. Loeb complained about the car on dry tarmac

In December Neuville said how he hopes Loeb will confirm what 3 other drivers are saying about the car, from the pics it looked like Loeb did that already on SD and he certainly made it clear in post-stage interviews on Sunday

Similarly Mikkelsen ought to be very happy from this event and people saying it's an event to forget for him miss the point. Sure crash out is bad. But the rest is much more important for his future. Loeb was at same pace as him, both could compete in front in tricky conditions and above all, Loeb was not happy with the car in the dry. Mikkelsen spend whole last year without changes getting done with some small stuff first before Spain and then basically gave up and tries to change his style to Neuville's "throw the car" one.

So with at least 3 drivers (prbly Sordo as well, depending on how you interpret Neuville) complaining, maybe Hyundai will actually make an effort to change something. Last year they didn't care until after Germany. It is also possible that they can't change the car much and Loeb will be forced to adapt. He surely is cable of it, after all he isn't 9 times WDC for nothing.However in that case I don't think Hyundai can charge for wins on the tarmac rallies with more grip (Corsica, Germany, Spain), unless it rains on them. Neuville's and Sordo's 2018 speed on these show that.

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Btw. on a related note the engine update Hyundai introduced (only for Neuville in AUS, now all) seems to have helped. In the uphill-only part of Turini they seemed to match Citroen and Toyota just fine. It's on the flat and downhill they struggled. (Funny how Neuville was sure he did extremely good on the downhill from Col det Turini and splits showed that part was actually his slowest)