Quote Originally Posted by deephouse View Post
I don' think that Xsara, C4 and DS3 was worst cars out there. I don't say C3 is bad, but in two years they could find a solution with their knowledge and experience. They are in this sport for many years.

And Toyota with big budget (also Hyundai) have big problems. Maybe that's a good thing so events are a more unpredictable and not dominant like in VW years. Well they have another story. If Ford, Hyundai and Citroen would be even back then I don't think that they would have so much wins and titles. Citroen didn't give a shit anymore with their programme, drivers and a car was out of date. Ford didn't have a budget since Ford pull out and car was old. Hyundai just start. So what real competition did VW have?

Now Citroen seems that they also don't care much about their development, even we don't know if they will be next year in championship. M-Sport is trying to catch up and are doing a pretty good. Well Hyundai and Toyota have their own battles. Hyundai with drivers and Toyota with reliability (and Latvala).
To VW's credit, they did a hard job very, very well and made it look easy.
Their planning and execution were near perfect.
They had good facilities and background knowledge of motorsport from years of Dakar.
They ran the team (people & equipment) for one year as an S2000 team before they started with the WRC car.
They tested the car for a long time, all over the world, and arrived with a car that was ready and very, very capable. (They bypassed cooling issues in Mexico because they went there and tested, tested, tested BEFORE they entered the championship)
Anyone else could have also entered the sport in the same way, but no one in recent history has. VW achieved what they did through a lot of hard work and a clever strategy that gave them a maximum head start. They then capitalized on that with good organisation, clever engineering and a good budget.