rally gb wales

citroen............kubica in.....meeke out.........  

Well he did stuff up when told to be careful.

Mal wrote:Well he did stuff up when told to be careful.

Twice....

harsh lads................very harsh...............  



but true, yeah I know............  

Don't worry Billy, Lach and I were talking about this when he did it and we could not understand why he was pushing as hard as he was when he was not catching anyone and he had been told quite bluntly to go for points. Oh well, the exuberance of youth.

aye he doesn't know how to cool off methinks...proved costly this time...hopefully he'l get another chance....  

Yea,In Finland he was told to be carful on the camera, but behind the scene he was told to push to try and get 3rd.He did and look what happened.
He hadn't sat in the car (except Testing) for a long time, and he wasn't that far off the pace.
Sure look at the mighty Loeb, wasn't in the car for a long time and a simple mistake put him out of France

Meeke is been wasted dont know what goes own in the teams heads not to give this man a chance

Meekes problem is that he was born 10 years too late. Had he been rallying 10 years ago he would have been team leader in one of the teams competing then.

But WRC (actually all top level motorsport) has changed where talent is no longer the priority for teams. Money is the be all and end all of the sport now. It no longer matters if you can drive the car the way it should be driven, so long as you are able to pay the repair bills and then some. The writing was on the wall when we started seeing drivers who were new to rallying compete in the WRC. The WRC should be where you end up if you are good enough, not where you learn what rallying is all about.

The FIA have let oil money from Arab states and Russia have too much of an influence at top level motorsport, they seem to have turned a blind eye while filling their pockets. The sad truth is without a massive financial backer paying the bills, i dont think Meeke will ever get a full works drive in WRC. If he doesnt get a works drive with Citroen next year his WRC career is over. I still think his best chance is in a R5 in the ERC

Sorry about the rant  

Anyway, looking forward to this rally. Off work taking a weeks holidays, the other half is away for the weekend so rally radio will blasting around the house. No interest who wins tbh. Ill be watching Citron Top Driver in the hope Cronin can pull it off

Well said Brian and accurate and to the point.........same thing in F1 when multi millionare play boy can BUY their seat if they can afford to pay for their car and their team mates then the sport is f***ed up..........drivers having to be better at PR and camera friendly than their ability to drive then the word SPORT should be removed and insert BUISNESS.....WRC is on a slippery slope.

totally agree lads.....  

Don't have a very strong view on this - money is what makes the world go round (unfortunately),but Meeke does seem inherently quick if not a little crash happy (remind you of anyone?) and is worth perservering with. Having said that, Kubica has consistently beaten Cronin this year, and I thought Cronin had a little extra about him based on his performances in the BRC in recent years. Kubica looks like he deserves a drive in a full WRC car regardless of sponsorship money on that basis. At the start of the year I called Ostberg to be in with a shout, (from memory as i cant find my suggestion to run a fantasy rally points score competition post) behind Ogier and Loeb (even recognising the latter was running limited events) and had Neuville down the pack but fair play to the Belgium who now looks inherently quick as well. What i'm wrestling with is whether the proportionately high numbers of drivers from France and Belgium in recent years in the higher point scorers is just coincidence or driven by the number of tarmac rallies which now exist in the WRC (those countries seems to have a large bias toward tarmac events). Thoughts?

Well said Paul, I agree....BUT Cronin is a better alround driver.....talented on Tarmac and Forestry.......front wheel drive.........four wheel drive.........rear wheel drive....big power and small.....he is a force to be reconed with.........but not going to be big in Hollywood !!!!!

paul, donie, good points lads......though I wouldn't necessarily put Cronin above meeke so easily...........he did win the 09 irc, and come 3rd in '10........ has proven his talent, but admit that he needs to temper his driving to suit conditions etc......but that is a fault also levelled at vatanen, toivonen, mcrae....all of whom would have won much more if they had lifted the right foot a wee bit..... imho!  

Between Meeke and Cronin as a complete driver, id put Cronin ahead of Meeke. Until we see them in the same car on the same rally we wont get a direct comparison as they have taken different routes to get to where they are. Meeke may have more out and out speed ( i stand to be corrected on that) but Cronin seems to be more level headed in the car. I cant remember the last time Cronin had a DNF due to driver error. Hes more capable of playing the long game with the bigger picture in mind. Hes made a lot of driver look very average while looking like hes well within his own limits.

Its down to what a team is looking for. If they want to win stages and and be seen to win stages, Meeke is your man as hes very good at PR, maybe the best in the WRC at the moment. If you want to a driver to do whats needed on an event, take it easy when he needs to, drive flat out when needed and bring it home in one piece then Cronin is you man.

If we were taking about Le Meeke from France or Croninen from Finland then they would have already got financial backing to be where they need/deserve to be. We have been produced some great drivers for such a small country but with the way motorsport is at the moment, unless you have money to back you up, you wont get anywhere near a works team

brian, I can't argue with any of that m8!  

[quote="brian"

If we were taking about Le Meeke from France or Croninen from Finland then they would have already got financial backing to be where they need/deserve to be. We have been produced some great drivers for such a small country but with the way motorsport is at the moment, unless you have money to back you up, you wont get anywhere near a works team[/quote]YES im have no doubt that if the boys were any other nationality they would have been picked up long long ago.......Keith was introduced to Vaternan junior at the launch of that book West Cork Rally a History......he is manager for ALL the big boys including Loeb etc etc so that might bear fruit........
AS for the great drivers we produced.....we sure have........am I right to say that an Irish driver have won all the Mitsubishi Evolution Challenges to date ????????? have we a googler ????

Like to see one of these so called top boys in a private team doing a local rally in Ireland. We would see if they got it then.

indeed m8!  

Sorry BMD for going away off topic here in this one mate!!!!

Back to you !!!!

not a problem m8, I've created a separate thread for all events anyway, which the mods are going to sticky...... its all good donie!  

Don't worry about being off-topic. That is standard for this place. We are just like bowerbirds, always being distracted by the shiniest ... wow, look at the RS200 model .... what was I saying?

   

and it seems that Kubica has done a Meeke on Rally GB - is it something to do w/ the latest modifications to the DS3 this yr that it prefers to spend time on the roof rather than the wheels? Or is it just that for the first time in yrs Citroen have true competition?

Not just Kubica, Mikko has turned his car into a pretzel as well. With Robert, he does have a new navigator and had been saying he was finding it hard to get used to the new guy and he did not have confidence in his pace notes. So Citroen now has three bent DS3s in how many weeks?