WRC2 / WRC3 News & Rumours 2022

[Danny0405]

Some updates on both WRC-2 and WRC-3 (mainly Junior as WRC-3 alone is not an important championship) after Estonia:

- great drive by Mikkelsen to take back the lead with a sensational Power Stage; Suninen was close before PS but I think Mikkelsen was managing for this one considering the length of the last day; good fight anyway. It was essential to achieve this kind of result for the championship.
- another nightmare result for Bulacia (the older one) with a costly mistake whereas his rally was good. Complete nightmare season for him (and for Toksport championship team even if it doesn’t matter really)
- Lindholm, great 1st day, much more average after that but he is in the game for WRC-2 Junior championship; Huttunen average drive in spite of the evolutions of the car
- Kajto, difficult to do better than this, he loses the lead in the championship but with one rally less; not a big result but it could still be useful if some competitors have issues later on. However, as evoked before, winning or losing the championship is more in his competitors’ hands than in his hands; he is not in the game to match the RC2 top 5 so he will depend on the mistakes of the others.

Championship situation should be clearer after Belgium (all main competitors should be at 5 rounds) and even more after Greece.

In WRC-3 Junior, big fight before the double-count last round in Greece (even if I must admit I’m not a huge fan of all these count-pointing tricks which fakes a bit the true nature of the championship in some cases with the double-counting last round, the 4-out-of rule this year + the point-stage win which is a bit less annoying):
Current standing is:
Pajari 85 (77 with worst result excluded)
Armstrong 85 (68)
Virves 84 (76)
Joona 79 (66)

Pajari won but Virves was incredibly fast (he even did a 11th time in SS23, tying his own best from Croatia and Portugal even if best RC3 WRC stage finish is Pajari 8th in Croatia for the moment).
So basically, Greece will be a winner-take-all (ok, not exactly true with the stage points).
Pajari is probably the front-runner for Greece but on technical gravel, Armstrong is able to match; and Virves is able of everything.
More complicated for Joona on the other hand, he sounds a bit lower in terms of speed (only 6 stage wins in the season against 21-26 range for the 3 other guys) and should hardly be in the game except if all the other 3 are making mistakes or having issues (and even winning the rallye could be not enough for him depending on the stage wins). But in that type of championship and in a rough rallye like Acropolis, who knows.
Still skeptical about Franceschi’s decision to withdraw (except if he had a deal to postpone his prize for next year for him or his brother), he could have been in the game in this situation by just staying steady before Greece; as he is doing rallies in France, I suppose it is not totally about injury.