Barum Czech Rally Zlin 2021

[Walach]

That's very good question. I guess they will wait until the end of the year anyway.

While he was certainly very impressive here, as other people pointed out he lives between the stages. (But Kopecky has also driven Barum zillion times.)
Another driver (Vlcek with new i20) said it today already that for him it's more impressive how Cais does on other rounds abroad. (For example the recent Polish one).

What imo is interesting is how Cais immediatelly started driving abroad and even though lots of his results were a bit "meh", it shows that it also helped him develop for home round.
Quite a difference to drivers like Cerny or Jakes who drive only same stages at home and expect to develop from there. Off course not everyone has that choice and budget for it.

So if anything Skoda should send Stritesky out as much as possible latest next year. For Cais if he is to aim higher he should focus on gravel. (So he doesn't end like Kopecky and Kresta before him, who never got good on gravel).

Loeb learned gravel first with WRC and same could be said about the approach with Fourmaux. But it's still early to say how Fourmaux turns out on gravel. So I'd call that rather an exception than a rule.

For sure Cais is local driver, but other drivers have driven those stages many times in the past so I would not exactly play it down to this and only this.
He can be very fast abroad aswell, gravel for sure is bit meh sometimes, but he is making some progress every event he does. But sometimes it is hard to rate the results because very often those are rather smaller local events (not talking recent Rzeszow).
Cerny actually did some events abroad at the beginning of his career which helped him to develop, but unfortunately only to level that is not enough to challenge Kopecky and also Pech. Jakes didnt drive abroad since his hillclimb european title, and also never reached the top level.
Mares made huge progres in ERC with R2 and later R5 so he quickly reached and imo surpassed Jakes/Cerny and got closer to Kopecky and maybe on par with Pech last year; but it feels like it came too late in his development to challenge Kopecky.
Mr Orsak who is team principal of Cais team recently mentioned their target is world rally championship, they planned to start in Croatia and now focus on Catalunya. He also noted that this is the reason why the run Ford instead of Skoda, because the path to WRC is clearer with M-Sport.
He also mentioned how closely M-Sport is following Cais progress (yes please, put the young lad under even more pressure, why wont you boss)
With Stritesky, lets wait and see what will be the aftermath of his first big crash. Surely it would be the best to sit in the car asap, but it is hard to do when the only R5 your team has is destroyed. Maybe it is the best time for Škoda to give him one or two test days now they have a new car to develop..