Quote Originally Posted by seb_sh View Post
In the Loeb/Ogier era we didn't see many specialists because the regular drivers were so good everywhere. There are very few specialists nowadays that can beat the main drivers even with road position advantage and it doesn't happen always. I think Hyundai pushed to the max and got a bit lucky with their 3rd driver performances, I'm thinking of Sordo especially made max use of his road position in this short year.
In Loeb era you didn't see specialists mostly because you could only enter 2 cars that could score points, not 2 out of 3, this was also true for first few years with Ogier/VW if you recall.

I don't think there is a shortage of specialists, Østberg in Citroen 2018 was pretty much working as a specialist and it worked on fast gravel, Breen is essentially a specialist at this point too (based on his run at Citroen in 2017-18).