Meeke and Citroen out of the ashes
This season has been a struggle, but in Spain it was man and C3 WRC in perfect harmony
Jimi Hendrix never took a guitar lesson in his life. Nobody taught David Bowie how to play the piano. They took their instruments and made sense of them. Last week in Spain, Kris Meeke did the same with a Citroen C3 WRC.
For much of the summer this man and that machine have been at complete odds. Not last week. Meeke, Paul Nagle and their French motor crushed allcomers in Catalunya. which strike fear into the drivers who know keeping the tyres in anything resembling good order is one of the season’s trickiest tasks. Unless, that is, you’re called Sebastien Ogier.
But the whole cleaning thing didn’t really happen in the first two stages. Ogier’s team-mate Ott Tanak hit the front on SS1 and stayed there after two, but he was slightly bemused. “There’s so much loose [gravel] on the roads,” he said. “I think it’s too thick. There are some lines, but it’s not cleaning.”
Combined, the Caeseres and Bot tests didn’t constitute even half the mileage of the Terra Alta stage that lay in wait at the end of the loop. The 24-miler – morning and afternoon – would be where the day was won and lost.
Arriving at the start of SS3, times were predictably close after such a small amount of competition. Hyundai new boy Andreas Mikkelsen was a largely unnoticed fifth. Starting ninth, there’s no doubt he would be beginning to benefit from a more swept road, but the flipside was his lack of knowledge of the i20 Coupe WRC, with just a day of running on the dirt before the start.
Fastest time and the lead after
Terra Alta was, therefore, something of a surprise. “I think I’m going to like this car,” he smiled after the stage.
And Norway was smiling with him; six tenths of a second behind was private Ford Fiesta WRC driver Mads Ostberg.
Ostberg’s run hadn’t been so straightforward. “I can’t see a thing,” he said at the finish. “We have dust coming in somewhere, it’s hard to breathe. Always it’s something stupid…”
As Ostberg nosed his car in the direction of Salou, service and hopefully something to stick in the hole (if the hole could be found), the rest of the field