Rally Argentina / Round-up
Round-up
M-Sport
Jipocar Czech National Team
Better times have not come
for Martin Prokop he has
not been able to equal his
best ever WRC result (being fourth in Argentina 2012)
and has been struggling the
whole rally. His eighth place
was only a feeble reward
for his work, or as his team
said: ‘both crew and car are
messed up after this extreme rally’. Hopefully they’ll
be fully ‘unmessed’ in Italy.
“I can’t believe I made such a mistake,” said Mikko Hirvonen after he
went off the road. The mechanics
did an incredible job and repaired
the Fiesta overnight. From 19th
place the Finn climbed back to 9th,
including some scratch times. He
did this to show his gratitude to the
mechanics, but also to show that
he is still a force to be reckoned
with. Elfyn Evans found back his
pace and did exactly what he came
for: gaining experience in the car
and the event and scoring solid
points doing this.
Volkswagen
16/44
Argentina was no different from
other rallies this, and last year.
The VW team was leading. A significant change however was Latvala; he seems to have found a
new confidence. He is now working with Christoph Treier who used
to ‘brainwash’ Marcus Grönholm.
His advice was simple. Don’t worry too much about things from
the past, don’t over analyse your
performances. Just get in the car
drive and enjoy it. Sebastien Ogier is probably the best driver we
have right now. He knows how to
go fast, he knows how to preserve
his tyres he even knows how to
enjoy his driving and talk about
it to journalists. But most importantly he knows when NOT to go
fast and to grab good points rather
than chasing some extra points
from someone who is (temporarily?) faster than him. Mikkelsen
was on track for a Volkswagen 1,
2, 3 when his alternator belt broke
and threw him back. There were
just not enough kilometres left to
steal back third place from Meeke.