Hyundai WRT

[wrc2017]

Meeke has been unfortunate with puctures, not all of his making, one minor incident, and has been fast on every rally, 4th in championship, and only driver to have finished all rallies this season, and able to mix it consistently with top 3.

He shouldnt be compared with Mikkelson in any shape or form.

[deephouse]

Agree with that. The thing is Meeke is driving in Toyota much better than he was at Citroen (despite 5 wins and much more crashes). Why Mikkelsen wouldn't find pace somewhere else. If he can't get along with the car, he could maybe try in other teams. But he there are 3 guys who is as fast as him sitting out there somewhere. Ooops one more who have experience. Hanninen could be the guy. So there is plenty guys who can challenge for 4,5,6th places maybe ocassionaly 3rd ,2nd or even win.

[pantealex]

In today's WRC cars you just cant take a young talented guy (As Greensmith) and wait for good results from the beginning. Today's cars and rallyes need so much more know-how than ever, it really takes at least one year to learn.
Problem as I see, is that after every season slowest guy or two drops. It has been like this for a long time, but the difference is that there is no-one who can replace them.
IMO Lappi, Suninen and Tidemand are good examples. They were superfast in WRC2 but right when the new-era WRC cars came the gap between those two machines are too damn big.
Maybe it's good, it differences the men from the boys. But maybe we will never see such amount of WRC drivers (part program also) as we did in early 2000's.
In conclusion I think that if someone had to be dropped, in this moment Mikkelsen is the guy.

Well, Lappi did win Rally Finland in his 1st WRC attempt and it´s not the easiest event.
Otherwise I agree.

[AnttiL]

Well, Lappi did win Rally Finland in his 1st WRC attempt and it´s not the easiest event.
Otherwise I agree.

Also won the power stage on his second event in SardegnA. Suninen won the fifth ever stage he did in a WRC car, in Poland

[Sulland]

Andreas or even management: Give Malcolm a ring!

[Allez Andruet]

Andreas or even management: Give Malcolm a ring!

Atleast in the past Even hasn't been too keen on paying for a drive.

[AnttiL]

Atleast in the past Even hasn't been too keen on paying for a drive.

Yep, that’s why Pontus left Even Management

[mknight]

And has scored less points overall than loeb who has started an event less. Mikkleson has failed to score points on 2 of his 5 starts which again is poor. Loeb has brought points in every rally started.

Loeb has brought points for himself in every rally he started. Manu points are something different.

For drivers that don't drive whole season team bosses likely want these things:
- manu points (measurable)
- taking points from driver title rivals (measurable)
- putting pressure on rivals (hard to measure, Loeb certainly does put psychic pressure on Ogier, but when he ends behind him in Chile it didn't have an effect in the end)
- publicity (also hard to measure, but Loeb wins that one for sure, from other drivers Meeke does get much more publicity than anyone else because of WRC crew)

Measurable things:

Manu points:
Sordo, took points in 2 out of 3 starts (66%), 6.67 points/rally
Loeb, took points in 2 out of 4 starts (50%), 6.75 points/rally
Mikkelsen, points in 3 out of 5 starts (60%), 7.2 points/rally

So at Hyundai Mikkelsen>Loeb>Sordo
(Sordo retirement due to technical issue in Mexico wasn't his fault though so it's a bit unfair to him)

Comparison with some of the other mentioned drivers is like this:
Latvala 3.33 points/rally
Lappi 6.33 but only out of 2 cars
Meeke 6.33
Suninen 6.0 out of 2 cars).

Mikkelsen>Loeb>Sordo > Meeke/Lappi > Suninen > Latvala
(the top 3 + Evans are ahead of everyone)

Taking points from other driver title challengers:
Sordo, 1 (Mexico Tanak PS ) + 2 (Cors place Tanak), + 3 (Arg Tanak place and PS) = 6 total, 2 /rally
Loeb 0 total, 0 per rally
Mikkelsen 5 total (Argentina Ogier place and Tanak place), 1/rally

Sordo>Mikkelsen>Loeb

Other drivers (counting 0 when they take points off own n1 at the same time), didn't do negative points when they actually help rivals (Meeke helped Ogier for 1 more point in Mexico). There might be an error of +- 1-2 points here somewhere:

Latvala 0
Lappi 4, 0.67 /rally
Meeke 0
Suninen (hard to count since there is no n1 but could say 5 (Cor (Neuville, Tanak) + Arg (Tanak)) => 0.83/rally)

Sordo>Mikkelsen> (Suninen)> Lappi>Loeb/Latvala/Meeke

These are the facts. Certainly these are by far not the only things that matter when picking drivers, but it's interesting that the driver that quite a few seem to think should be fired and never hired by anyone again is ahead of 6 other drivers in manu points and 5 in the "taking points" part.

[Allez Andruet]

driver that quite a few seem to think should be fired and never hired by anyone again

And who were we talking about again?

[Tarmop]

Keep repeating that to yourself...but maybe preferably only to yourself? Just that this is getting old and tiresome..,

Neuville`s DNF helped his statistics to improve a lot, and because they don`t run all the events simultanously, it is hard to judge those "facts".