Rally-eMag 014 December 2013 | Page 29

Wales Rally GB / Rally review 29/64 The drivers of the year, Neuville and Ogier. The Belgian was the biggest surprise this year and developed into a real star. Ogier was in a class of his own looks hard to beat in the coming years. Interesting? I see a few eyebrows raised after seeing the adjective ‘interesting’ in the former sentence. Before we go to the rallying action of this year’s edition of Wales Rally GB, we take you back on a little trip through 2013. It all started in Monte Carlo where Volkswagen debuted their long anticipated Polo R. As we earlier indicated, the team came, saw and conquered. Not right away but during the season it became completely apparent that they were the ones to beat. In the end it shows that they are one step short of winning everything possible. In Wales they had to try to achieve that: the one/ two in the championship. Is that interesting? Well in a way it is: the global player VW that sees a future in our beloved sport. They are prepared to invest enough money and to take the time to build a team that can’t be beaten. That’s good, but perhaps for the sport it is even more important they launched a PR campaign that is directed at the general public in every possible way. What company dares to put an old VW van in Rallying the world livery up an extremely slippery mountain road leading to the holy shrine of rallying, the (in-) famous Col de Turini? VW does, and they continue to do so if we look at their end-of-year ‘currywurst’ campaign. Check YouTube for this little gem of a video. Thierry Neuville. We don’t expect Hyundai to follow VW in it’s tracks in 2014, they didn’t take the learning year that VW did, but we expect them to be challenging quite a few teams in 2015. The last interesting thing we noticed is the pro [