Wrc 2/3 2021

[mknight]

As you certainly understand the main reason why Østberg is saying that is to put pressure on Mikkelsen. All the talk about "dominating" and "showing speed" has a clear goal of making him push too much.
Similarly your main reason for taking out just that one quote from the long article and post it here is to troll.


However there is some historic background there that is not clear for everyone.

Ever since the start of their careers Østberg has been especially negative to Mikkelsen for some reason (I don't know exactly why). It topped in 2008 Norwegian championship final round.
Østberg was the defending champion and had the upper hand in the start of the season but very soon Mikkelsen was the faster driver and got more wins. Before the last round "everyone" and especially Mikkelsen's team thought that Mikkelsen just had to finish 3rd to get the title. So he was driving safely and not pushing and finished 3rd.
"Everyone" was declaring him champion and Østberg supposedly congratulated him on the title on the phone after the last stage...
Then by the time they got to service someone read the rules in detail and found out that actually Østberg is champion (think it was because he won the first round or something like that). Østberg then went out and declared he knew that the whole rally. (contrast that with him congratulating on the title after last stage). Few people doubt that Mikkelsen could have driven faster and got the title by getting 2nd place in the rally if he knew it was needed (but off course he could have crashed too).

Year after Mikkelsen ran out of money and they didn't really meet in direct competition so it seemed this calmed down. This year Østberg is for some reason going back towards this anti-Mikkelsen mentality. Recently he also declared in an interview how he "beat" Mikkelsen last time they were driving WRCs in 2018.


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But obviously for this kind of talk to work at all there has to be some truth in it. Which is:
- Lappi has indeed more points (59) from his 2 starts than Mikkelsen from any 2 starts (53), Østberg has 44 from his 2, Suninen 41
- In Portugal 3 drivers had same or better speed than Østberg (Lappi, Suninen and Gryazin), this was somewhat surprising tbh, I was expecting Østberg to fight with Lappi, while I certainly didn't expect him to be as good on tarmac in Croatia. Gryazin does not have high title chances though with one zero alreadly and 3+4th place. For some reason he also isn't entered for championship points in Sardinia.

- As is also pointed out in the article when Mikkelsen announced his aim to dominate every rally he starts in the only people who said they will enter WRC2 were Fourmaux and Solberg. And this was after Monza when Mikkelsen indeed did just "dominate" against Østberg (one running WRC3 and one WRC2 though)