MEETING KRIS MEEKE
Getting a Citroën Dispatch van sideways is all in a day’s PR work for WRC star Kris Meeke, but soon the serious business begins again with the start of the 2017 championship. We get the inside line
As a new era of monster WRC cars draws near, we get the inside story from Great Britain’s gifted WRC contender
OBVIOUSLY HE DOESN’T SAY IT, BUT KRIS MEEKE HAS definitely got the rougher deal today. We’re at Silverstone and, over on the circuit, Motogp rider Jorge Lorenzo is doing some promotional work for his sponsor, Monster Energy Drinks, which involves him driving a Mercedes Formula 1 car. On the rally stage next door, Kris is also performing promotional duties for his employer. He’s driving a Citroën Dispatch van.
To be fair, we have a laugh in the Dispatch. I wouldn’t have thought you could get a completely standard van quite so sideways quite so precisely, but Meeke does it lap after lap, carrying more and more speed into corners with judicious use of the handbrake to get the angles. If this is what he has to do occasionally as payback for a solid WRC contract, then Meeke is more than happy to oblige.
The 2016 season wasn’t really meant to be Kris Meeke’s breakthrough year, but that’s what it was. Sure, 2015 saw his first WRC victory and the signing of a three-year deal with Citroën. By comparison, 2016 was always going to be largely spent testing the new C3 WRC (see page 109), with only a partial
programme of WRC rallies in the old car to keep his eye in. But, if your name is Sébastien Ogier, then I’d argue that 2016 was the year that made you sit up, take notice and regard Kris Meeke as a very real threat to your dominance.
Why? Well, there were Meeke’s victories in Portugal and Finland. At one point in the season he had won half the rallies he had competed in. And while he would be the first to admit that he had an advantageous road position in Portugal, in Finland it was pure speed that propelled him to the top step of the podium. And it was his stage times throughout the year that really left people flabbergasted. In modern WRC, you don’t win stages by 35 seconds, but that’s what Meeke did on stage nine of the Tour de Corse. To give that some context, the next five drivers were covered by less than ten seconds.
Van demo over, we have a chat about it all. ‘Ogier’s done it to us a bit over the years,’ says Meeke in his quiet Northern Irish accent. ‘But this year it just seemed to click. Monte, stage two, we were 12 seconds quicker than anybody. In Portugal we were going quickest by seven and eight seconds on what were really sprint stages – you know, 20km stages. Then on Ouninpohja [in Finland – arguably rallying’s most famous stage] we managed to
‘I wouldn’t have thought you could get a completely standard van quite so sideways quite so precisely, but meeke does It lap after lap’
clear the field by 13 seconds. To do that, especially against [Finn] Jari-matti [Latvala], was pretty special. And in Corsica to do it by margins of over half a minute… okay, you have 55km stages, but I hope I just sent a little bit of a message to the others, you know, because the DS3 hasn’t been developed at all in the last two to three years.
‘My mind’s certainly in the right place now. I know Citroën are totally focused now on the new car, which we’ve been testing all year, and to have that commitment that you’re going to be part of that project for three years gives you a lot of confidence. For me, that’s been the difference. I’ve never had a long-term future in my career before, so to have that now… it’s so much more fun and pleasant to drive a rally car because you’re not hell-bent on proving yourself; you can just relax and enjoy it. And that’s what I’ve been doing, so hopefully we can carry the lessons that we’ve learnt through to 2017. Even when there are points to be scored we just have to enjoy it. And when I do enjoy it, the points seem to come.’
No question, 2017 is a big year, not just for Meeke and Citroën, but for the whole of WRC, because the new regulations mean that we will see faster and wilderlooking cars on the stages (see page 110). So, just how different has the new C3 felt in testing?
‘A lot of things are different and that was one of the big challenges for me,’ he says, ‘because Citroën has obviously employed all the new aspects of the new regulations but they’ve also changed a little bit their philosophy in terms of geometry and suspension and everything. So there’s separate things you have to look at and isolate – the gains that everybody will have from the new regulations, but also the gains that we’re experiencing from having the new philosophy. It’s been a nice challenge to work through all that with the engineers, but you certainly notice the difference from the current World Rally cars.
‘The cars are anything up to 70bhp more powerful than the current cars and that’s the immediate thing when you get into the car. To have that big a step is unheard of in the World Championship for years.
‘We also have a wider track – it’s 55mm wider – which obviously gives more stability, and corner speeds are a little bit higher. You’ve a centre diff, which makes the car turn better, making it slightly more efficient in the corners, and that’s an area where Citroën have quite a lot of experience from the past. Plus the aerodynamics are bigger. It’s a bit of a nod back to the Group B era, with massive skirts on the front and side and bigger rear wings so they look a lot more aggressive.
‘I haven’t driven much with aero cars, but obviously in rallying it’s become more and more important over the years, and now you’re allowed a big step in aero compared to before. Citroën has spent a lot of time in the wind tunnel – I think everyone will have – but it’s becoming so, so important because when you’re allowed to take those gains you have to take them.
‘In terms of overall speed, I think the slower the stages, the bigger the difference. The faster the stages, the less difference you see. But yeah, they’re fascinating to drive and it’s fascinating for me just to be involved in a new project with the full force of Citroën Racing behind it, because over the last few years, since my involvement in the World Rally Team, they’ve been focusing on World Touring Cars. Now things have changed and you really notice that experience in the team and the depth of knowledge. Their target is to win and that’s certainly what we hope to do.’
By November, the team had already made the most of the big decisions for homologation. ‘It’s then we start to get a little bit nervous and anxious, thinking, “Have we done enough testing? Are we making the right decisions for the future?” because you never truly know where you are until you go up against the opposition.
‘That’s your only true reference point and everyone – the Hyundai guys, the Ford guys, with Toyota coming – they’re all going to feel their cars are good because they feel so much better than what we have currently. But how good they are we won’t know until the season is underway.
We’re not like F1, where we have pre-season testing where we can sort of get a benchmark.’
After watching the various videos of the new C3 WRC car testing, I’ve been staggered by how composed it looks – and how little steering lock is required.
‘I think a little bit of that comes from aerodynamics,’ says Kris. ‘You’re arriving at stuff with that much more speed, you turn a bit earlier, nail it and you can carry the aero through the corner. We’ll have to wait and see how all the driving styles figure it out because the addition of a centre differential also changes your attitude in the car; it changes the way you approach it. You’re working with engineers now to help you round a corner. With the DS3 you had no centre diff and you just had to play with your front and rear [diffs], but now you can ask an engineer to help you in a corner and program-in a new map. It’ll be interesting to see how that all pans out.
I ask if it will be possible to alter the character of the diff mid-stage, thinking of F1 and how Hamilton, Vettel and the rest all seem so busy with the buttons on the wheel during the course of a lap.
‘Yeah, within a stage you’ll be able to change a centre diff map. If the rain comes on or you go onto a loose, slippy section, you’ll be able to change a diff map, so it’s a hell of a lot of work for engineers to start to think about all that…’
And for Kris and co-driver Paul Nagle, too, presumably. ‘Yeah, even to the point that the speed in the car is now so high, especially on tarmac, that you simply can’t have the same amount of information in your notes. In Corsica on the recce we did an exercise making notes, thinking about 2017 and removing lots of little bits of information that I would have had with a DS3. With the new car we will be
‘Everyone will be keen to SEE if the new cars can capture a little bit of the Excitement of Group b’
arriving at stuff with more speed and you won’t have time to digest all the information.’
So is there a way they can shorten certain words in the notes, almost using a type of code?
‘We’re working on certain words,’ Kris reveals, ‘ but when there’s a sequence of corners now, instead of grading the corner we just say left-right or whatever it is, instead of actually calling what each corner is. You just have to anticipate it and go with the flow.’
It’s certainly going to be a season of change, but the advantage Meeke has from only competing in a partial programme in 2016 is that he’s been able to do so much testing (see separate story, right).
‘Yeah, by the time we arrive in Monte Carlo I might have 5000 or 6000km done in the car, and that’s going to be, hopefully, a benefit for me. But we certainly know our rivals won’t leave any stone unturned and, with drivers of the calibre of Ogier, it’s never going to be easy against them. But we’ll see.’
Indeed we will. Since our interview, VW has announced its withdrawal – but also the likelihood of a private team running a newly homologated Polo. Ogier, however, will be driving a Ford Fiesta for the M-sport World Rally team. Whatever, there are so many new aspects to the WRC for 2017 that it should be fascinating to watch, to see if the new cars can capture a little bit of the excitement of the Group B cars of old – and to discover if anyone not called Séb can win the title.
Kris Meeke is certainly in the right frame of mind for 2017. As he says: ‘You want to leave a place excited about coming back and I’m really excited to go back to every rally that I competed at in 2016, so that bodes well.’