Rally Guanajuato Mexico / Round-up
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Citroën World Rallyteam
Hyundai Shell World Rallyteam
At Citroën there must be mixed feelings. It
was Meeke’s task to drive carefully and gain
as much experience as possible. But at two
occasions we saw that the Northern Irishman has not completely changed yet. In
Monte Carlo he was doing perfectly by just
awaiting his chances, He was doing that in
Mexico too and succeeding (in fourth!) before his first problem. Then a wheel came
loose, bad luck? In the last stage of the rally
he again had to stop. This time he had cut
a corner a bit too much and broke his suspension. Bad luck again? We hope so but
we also hope it is not simply because Kris
Meeke… is Kris Meeke. Mads Østberg is
doing well but he too seems to be to inconsistent to be able to knock on the door to
really challenge the VW clan. In Mexico he
tried and in the beginning even succeeded,
but mistakes, both from the driver as the
co-driver ruined their chances. We have
not given up hope however. His rally pace
stays promising.
In our Swedish roundup we claimed Hyundai
might have a problem with the suspensions
of their i20’s. In the country that is infamous
for its ability to break any suspension, the Korean cars only had a relatively small problem
in this field. This enabled them to reach the
excellent result in Mexico. After their third attempt in the WRC they reached a podium position, a feat that cannot be underestimated.
That Neuville is a capable driver, we already
knew. That he could score points with the car
doesn’t surprise us, but that it would happen
in his third rally in the car, we didn’t foresee.
This doesn’t mean they will be this year’s
champions. There is quite a job ahead. Just
look at Chris Atkinson who had a host of problems with the car. But none of these problems
permanently stopped one of the cars. Not
only both cars reached the finish after having completed all competitive kilometres, but
both cars finished in the points too. Neuville
was really happy with this result: “Of course
this was a real team effort and I’m proud of
being a member of this team.” Team principal
Michel Nandan added: “We achieved quite a
bit today and will appropriately celebrate this
result but there is much more to come and
therefore our learning curve has to continue
despite this good result!”
RK M-Sport World Rallyteam
Robert Kubica is confused. “In my
heart is a racing driver, I stil have to
learn to be a WRC driver.” Malcolm
Wilson is still confident about his
driver. I’m prepared to help him in
every possible way, because I know
that in the end Kubica will be an asset to any WRC team. If necessary
I will enlist another co-driver. But it
is till early days. In our opinion the
first thing to be done is put an experienced co-driver beside him. He
started the season with Maciej Szczepaniak, an experienced co-driver
who drove with Tomasz Kuchar and
Michael Kosciuszko. But with all due
respect, these drivers are in another
league. But we can leave it to Wilson
to find the suitable solution.