Rally News

[luieluv]

Gronholm linked to Mini WRC drive

News27th July 2010
By Giles Wade

Mini’s announcement of its return to world rallying offered no clues about its potential driver line-up but double world champion Marcus Gronholm is already in the frame for one of the factory seats.

It is understood Mini’s partner Prodrive will field two works cars initially with two further factory-blessed machines being run by customer outfits.

Gronholm, who drove a Prodrive-run Subaru Impreza WRC2008 on Rally de Portugal in 2009, revealed to Autosport magazine that he had spoken to Prodrive about joining Mini’s WRC bid.

“There was some contact a while ago,” Gronholm told Autosport. “I might be interested. I would have to think. It’s tough for the whole season again, but maybe it would be good to be involved in testing and some rallies.”

Markko Martin is another possible candidate. The Estonian carried out the test and development work of the Impreza WRC2008 and said recently he was keen on a return to competition.

Other drivers linked to the project include Norwegian youngster Mads Ostberg, a long-term Prodrive customer, and Briton Kris Meeke, who is defending his Intercontinental Rally Challenge title in a Peugeot UK-backed 207.

link:
http://www.maxrally.com/news/entry/gron ... wrc_drive/

[luieluv]

The official website of WRC has been revamped it seems. Looks very different.

[sleenster]

The official website of WRC has been revamped it seems. Looks very different.

Good, the old website was a piece of trash.

[saif]

First design sketch of Mini WRC: http://twitpic.com/295tdb/full

[Sébastien Loeb]

NEW LOOK VERY NICE AND FACILE

[luieluv]

WRC: Toyota keen on rallying return

Toyota has admitted interest in re-entering the World Rally Championship for the first time since quitting the sport at the end of 1999.

This week’s Motorsport News reveals that the Japanese manufacturer has now openly expressed an interest in returning to the WRC.

Toyota shelved both its rally and sportscar programmes upon entering Formula One in 2000 but following its withdrawal from grand prix racing at the end of last season has been searching for viable alternatives to continue its racing activities.

Senior executives travelled to Rally Portugal last May, an experience which has apparently helped pave the way towards re-establishing a European rally project, although it’s not yet known which series that would be with.

Toyota Motorsport chairman Tadashi Yamashina has eluded to the existence of a programme, suggesting that rallying offered the best media exposure of those options outside of F1.

“Toyota wants to be engaged in motorsports in Europe and rallies have the highest media exposure,” he said.

Although no date has been officially set, it’s understood that an announcement could be made in the coming weeks.

Toyota aren’t the only manufacturer to be showing renewed interest in the WRC. Earlier this week Mini announced its long-awaited return to the sport while VW are also widely thought to be evaluating an entry.

link:
http://www.motorstv.com/car/rally/wrc/2 ... ing-return

[beefree88]

WRC: Toyota keen on rallying return

Toyota has admitted interest in re-entering the World Rally Championship for the first time since quitting the sport at the end of 1999.

This week’s Motorsport News reveals that the Japanese manufacturer has now openly expressed an interest in returning to the WRC.
http://www.motorstv.com/car/rally/wrc/2 ... ing-return

[LadyR]

The official website of WRC has been revamped it seems. Looks very different.

Good, the old website was a piece of trash.

Agree! Well, it was already time to do that. WRC deserve also a well-organized an d good looking website, not just F1. I like the new layout too!

[sleenster]

The official website of WRC has been revamped it seems. Looks very different.

Good, the old website was a piece of trash.

Agree! Well, it was already time to do that. WRC deserve also a well-organized an d good looking website, not just F1. I like the new layout too!

Actually, the live timing on the website broke down many times while we were following the rally, causing lots of angst.

[sleenster]

The wrc.com review: Neste Oil Rally Finland

Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala is not your typical rally driver, or even your typical Finn. For a start, he doesn’t drink. After celebrating his first win on the Rally Finland - an event that every Finnish driver desperately wants to win - he conceded that on this one occasion he might “taste” a bit of Champagne, but that he certainly wasn’t going to drink.

Unlike many of his tongue-tied compatriots, Latvala also frequently talks - at great length - as if he has swallowed a dictionary. How many other drivers regularly use words such as ‘paradoxical’?

Latvala is also disarmingly honest. On being asked if he had thought at the beginning of the rally that he could win, he answered: “To tell the truth, no.” He was genuinely sorry for the misfortune that befell his team mate, Mikko Hirvonen, on stage four and was first to pay tribute to the man who finished second to him at the finish, Sebastien Ogier.

Leaving personal and team loyalties aside, Latvala’s was one of the most popular victories of the season. And you’d be hard pushed to find anyone in the service park, whatever colour their shirt, who would disagree with that.

Finland is always a special event, and this year the organisers made a big effort to mark the 60th anniversary of the ‘Finnish Grand Prix’. One of the key innovations was the adoption of a two-day format for this first time, leading to very long days and frantic action.

It certainly didn’t make life easy for the drivers and teams, but rallying isn’t meant to be easy. If it were easy, then everybody would do it. Finnish rally legend Markku Alen said that the long days reminded him of the golden age of the sport, when the drivers hardly got a chance to catch breath and were flat-out for hours on end. Sleep is for wimps after all.

The irony is that while the new format may owe something to the old days, it was the younger generation of drivers who came to the fore this year.

Latvala was the youngest driver ever to win Rally Finland (breaking a record held by Alen for more than 30 years) while Ogier came within seconds of depriving him of a momentous victory.

In many ways, Ogier’s was the most impressive drive of the rally because we can take it for granted that the Finns have a home advantage on such a specialised event, particularly when they have prior knowledge of it. Latvala had started Finland seven times before, and all but one of those participations were in a World Rally Car. Ogier, by contrast, has only been in Finland twice before and last year marked his World Rally Car debut on the event.

Not only that, but Ogier had a fair bit of pressure on his shoulders as it was his first event in the factory team alongside Sebastien Loeb - whom he comprehensively beat.

A pattern is emerging now as Ogier has actually defeated Loeb for the last three gravel rallies on the trot: New Zealand, Portugal and Finland. No wonder the six-time World Champion is less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the idea of having Ogier as his team mate next year.

Of course, it’s unlikely that Loeb was pushing at his hardest: firstly because he still has a dominant World Championship lead and secondly because this was Finland, where Loeb admits that he has to push harder than anywhere else to make a difference.

If there’s one thing that Sebastien Loeb hates it’s going outside his comfort zone, as the Frenchman’s whole driving style (and consequent success) is predicated on not exceeding his personal limits.

Anybody questioning Loeb’s speed and motivation though is about to be sorely disappointed, as next we head to Germany. Shortly afterwards there is France and Spain, so expect normal service to be resumed.

The title is certainly heading to Haguenau again this year but the closest challenger is likely to be Ogier - which is precisely why Ford tried to sign him for next year. Ford’s management admits to being disappointed by Ogier’s decision to stay with Citroen, but they point out that the search goes on.

Maybe they should consider recalling the services of Juha Kankkunen, who last drove for Ford in 1997 and 1998. Having not competed in Finland since 2002, the 51-year-old Kankkunen drove like he had never been away.

He looked comfortable from start to finish, returning his Stobart Ford Focus WRC without a scratch on it. Kankkunen belongs to a different era, one that relies on raw talent rather than skilled telemetry. To understand why it’s enough, just look at any of his in-car videos, this one in the ‘video’ section of this site is a good example.

Kankkunen’s pace notes - read by his fellow Finn Juha Repo - are in English. What is astonishing is how comparatively sparse they are: there is very little detail in the notes apart from “easy right”, “easy left”, and the distances between the corners. Kankkunen essentially drives the road as he sees it, in the same way that Jimi Hendrix couldn’t read music. This will be Kankkunen’s final Rally Finland, and it was a genuine privilege to see his awesome talent displayed one last time.

But it’s always the Finn standing on the top step of the podium who really matters. For the Finns, losing at home is inconceivable, so it doesn’t matter too much who does the winning.

Sebastien Loeb winning the Rally Finland two years ago - and victories Carlos Sainz and Didier Auriol before him - were low points in the whole country’s history. As Alen put it: “I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be beaten by a foreigner on our home territory. If I had finished second to someone like Loeb or Ogier on Rally Finland, I wouldn’t be smiling on the podium. I’d go away and lock myself in the sauna for two weeks to think about what I’d done...”

Rally Finland is that much of a big deal.

http://www.wrc.com/news/features/the-wr ... &page=3898

[Dracaena]

The wrc.com review: Neste Oil Rally Finland

Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala is not your typical rally driver, or even your typical Finn. For a start, he doesn’t drink. After celebrating his first win on the Rally Finland - an event that every Finnish driver desperately wants to win - he conceded that on this one occasion he might “taste” a bit of Champagne, but that he certainly wasn’t going to drink.

Unlike many of his tongue-tied compatriots, Latvala also frequently talks - at great length - as if he has swallowed a dictionary. How many other drivers regularly use words such as ‘paradoxical’?

Latvala is also disarmingly honest. On being asked if he had thought at the beginning of the rally that he could win, he answered: “To tell the truth, no.” He was genuinely sorry for the misfortune that befell his team mate, Mikko Hirvonen, on stage four and was first to pay tribute to the man who finished second to him at the finish, Sebastien Ogier.

Leaving personal and team loyalties aside, Latvala’s was one of the most popular victories of the season. And you’d be hard pushed to find anyone in the service park, whatever colour their shirt, who would disagree with that.

Finland is always a special event, and this year the organisers made a big effort to mark the 60th anniversary of the ‘Finnish Grand Prix’. One of the key innovations was the adoption of a two-day format for this first time, leading to very long days and frantic action.

It certainly didn’t make life easy for the drivers and teams, but rallying isn’t meant to be easy. If it were easy, then everybody would do it. Finnish rally legend Markku Alen said that the long days reminded him of the golden age of the sport, when the drivers hardly got a chance to catch breath and were flat-out for hours on end. Sleep is for wimps after all.

The irony is that while the new format may owe something to the old days, it was the younger generation of drivers who came to the fore this year.

Latvala was the youngest driver ever to win Rally Finland (breaking a record held by Alen for more than 30 years) while Ogier came within seconds of depriving him of a momentous victory.

In many ways, Ogier’s was the most impressive drive of the rally because we can take it for granted that the Finns have a home advantage on such a specialised event, particularly when they have prior knowledge of it. Latvala had started Finland seven times before, and all but one of those participations were in a World Rally Car. Ogier, by contrast, has only been in Finland twice before and last year marked his World Rally Car debut on the event.

Not only that, but Ogier had a fair bit of pressure on his shoulders as it was his first event in the factory team alongside Sebastien Loeb - whom he comprehensively beat.

A pattern is emerging now as Ogier has actually defeated Loeb for the last three gravel rallies on the trot: New Zealand, Portugal and Finland. No wonder the six-time World Champion is less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the idea of having Ogier as his team mate next year.

Of course, it’s unlikely that Loeb was pushing at his hardest: firstly because he still has a dominant World Championship lead and secondly because this was Finland, where Loeb admits that he has to push harder than anywhere else to make a difference.

If there’s one thing that Sebastien Loeb hates it’s going outside his comfort zone, as the Frenchman’s whole driving style (and consequent success) is predicated on not exceeding his personal limits.

Anybody questioning Loeb’s speed and motivation though is about to be sorely disappointed, as next we head to Germany. Shortly afterwards there is France and Spain, so expect normal service to be resumed.

The title is certainly heading to Haguenau again this year but the closest challenger is likely to be Ogier - which is precisely why Ford tried to sign him for next year. Ford’s management admits to being disappointed by Ogier’s decision to stay with Citroen, but they point out that the search goes on.

Maybe they should consider recalling the services of Juha Kankkunen, who last drove for Ford in 1997 and 1998. Having not competed in Finland since 2002, the 51-year-old Kankkunen drove like he had never been away.

He looked comfortable from start to finish, returning his Stobart Ford Focus WRC without a scratch on it. Kankkunen belongs to a different era, one that relies on raw talent rather than skilled telemetry. To understand why it’s enough, just look at any of his in-car videos, this one in the ‘video’ section of this site is a good example.

Kankkunen’s pace notes - read by his fellow Finn Juha Repo - are in English. What is astonishing is how comparatively sparse they are: there is very little detail in the notes apart from “easy right”, “easy left”, and the distances between the corners. Kankkunen essentially drives the road as he sees it, in the same way that Jimi Hendrix couldn’t read music. This will be Kankkunen’s final Rally Finland, and it was a genuine privilege to see his awesome talent displayed one last time.

But it’s always the Finn standing on the top step of the podium who really matters. For the Finns, losing at home is inconceivable, so it doesn’t matter too much who does the winning.

Sebastien Loeb winning the Rally Finland two years ago - and victories Carlos Sainz and Didier Auriol before him - were low points in the whole country’s history. As Alen put it: “I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be beaten by a foreigner on our home territory. If I had finished second to someone like Loeb or Ogier on Rally Finland, I wouldn’t be smiling on the podium. I’d go away and lock myself in the sauna for two weeks to think about what I’d done...”

Rally Finland is that much of a big deal.

http://www.wrc.com/news/features/the-wr ... &page=3898

Awww at the stuff about Jari-Marianne and to Alen's comment about losing to a foreigner.

[saif]

Top 10: The rising stars of world rallying

David Richards could face an embarrassment of riches when he comes to choosing a young driver for Mini’s world championship entry next season. Here are 10 rising talents he should consider:

Kevin Abbring: Leading force in the Junior World Rally Championship, Abbring, 21, is a product of the KNAF (Dutch motorsport federation) Talent First scheme. He’s shown pace on asphalt and gravel.

Mathieu Arzeno: Circuit racer turned rally driver, the 22-year-old from France is contesting the Junior world championship in a Citroen C2 S1600.

Pierre Campana: Has no gravel knowledge, not much cash or a command of English but he’s got plenty of raw natural ability and has sparkled in the Clio R3 European Trophy this season.

Keith Cronin: The defending British champion has the pace to shine on the world stage but just needs funding and a touch more charisma to go all the way.

Hermann Gassner Jr: Capable German works as a mechanic to help pay for his small programme of WRC events. Fortunately Red Bull has taken an interest in the promising 21-year-old.

Adam Gould: Hopelessly underfunded Briton whom Petter Solberg’s co-driver Chris Patterson said was the best young driver in the British championship.

Joonas Lindroos: The 25-year-old has been tipped to shine by four-time world champion Tommi Makinen. Outright victory on the OK Auto Ralli recently was a fine effort.

Thierry Neuville: Dovetailing a limited programme in the IRC in a Peugeot Belgium-Luxembourg-backed 207 with a JWRC campaign in a Citroen C2 S1600. Now impressing in both after shaky starts.

Jarkko Nikara: Former Pirelli Star Driver now achieving giant-killing results in the British championship at the wheel of a R2-specification Renault Twingo.

Ott Tanak: Victory in the Production Car World Rally Championship in Finland last month proved Tanak has the temperament to go with his undoubted raw speed.

[LadyR]

The official website of WRC has been revamped it seems. Looks very different.

Good, the old website was a piece of trash.

Agree! Well, it was already time to do that. WRC deserve also a well-organized an d good looking website, not just F1. I like the new layout too!

Actually, the live timing on the website broke down many times while we were following the rally, causing lots of angst.

Oh yes, I very often couldn't open the page....that was irritting.....luckily it's over now!

[dindi]

The wrc.com review: Neste Oil Rally Finland

Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala is not your typical rally driver, or even your typical Finn. For a start, he doesn’t drink. After celebrating his first win on the Rally Finland - an event that every Finnish driver desperately wants to win - he conceded that on this one occasion he might “taste” a bit of Champagne, but that he certainly wasn’t going to drink.

Unlike many of his tongue-tied compatriots, Latvala also frequently talks - at great length - as if he has swallowed a dictionary. How many other drivers regularly use words such as ‘paradoxical’?...

Off-Topic: show

That's it. It's official. I'm in love I mean, a bespectacled speed demon word nerd who doesn't drink??? We're so compatible!!! Jari-Mari, come to Manila!

And, oh... thanks, Sleen

[Kinga]

The wrc.com review: Neste Oil Rally Finland

Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala is not your typical rally driver, or even your typical Finn. For a start, he doesn’t drink. After celebrating his first win on the Rally Finland - an event that every Finnish driver desperately wants to win - he conceded that on this one occasion he might “taste” a bit of Champagne, but that he certainly wasn’t going to drink.

Unlike many of his tongue-tied compatriots, Latvala also frequently talks - at great length - as if he has swallowed a dictionary. How many other drivers regularly use words such as ‘paradoxical’?...

Off-Topic: show

That's it. It's official. I'm in love I mean, a bespectacled speed demon word nerd who doesn't drink??? We're so compatible!!! Jari-Mari, come to Manila!

And, oh... thanks, Sleen

Off-Topic: show

Dindi, I knew it! I knew it!!! When I read sentences like "he doesn't drink" and "talks as if he has swallowed a dictionary" and stuff like that, plus the glasses... OMG!!!