HOW MEEKE PLANS TO BOUNCE BACK
R ight on cue, Tommi Makinen delivered. Kris Meeke was extolling the four-time champion’s virtues as a team principal when the Finn emerged from a side room. Seeing his latest signing talking to Motorsport News, he broke into a broad grin. Walking past u
“Looking back I could have handled situations a bit different, but we arrived in Monte after doing relatively little testing. And what testing we did do was in Sanremo. I questioned that at the time, but I was told to just drive. The car felt mega in Sanremo and – as we saw in Corsica and Catalunya it was mega on Tarmac – but not in Monte. We were so far away.”
The following year and a bit wasn’t all bad. There were wins in Mexico and Spain and genuine promise at the start of last season. Meeke opened ’18 with a powerstage win in Monte and the lead and an eventual podium in Mexico. He was running second in Corsica and Argentina until a pacenote error and puncture intervened. And then Portugal. And then Thursday afternoon. “I got a phone call for about one minute where I was told that maybe I wasn’t doing Sardinia,” he says. “What? Right, OK. I said to Pierre [Budar, Citroen team principal]: ‘We’ve got to chat about this.’ He was: ‘Er, er…’ Then I read 10 minutes later on the internet that my career was over. Nobody has spoken to me since. I tried to make calls, but there was nothing. I tried to call Pierre back, but there was no answer.
“That evening, my wife was away shopping. When she came home we went down to the local park, the kids played, I took a beer and I said: ‘Right, we’re going to chill for a while.’ I enjoyed time with the family, got on my bike and did my stuff.”
Meeke did his own stuff for three months. He didn’t talk to anybody. He kept his head down. But he wasn’t done. Not yet.
“I knew it was pointless to lift the phone the week after Portugal,” he says. “I knew I had to wait two or three months to let the dust settle. You can make that call before Finland, but nobody thinks about drivers at that time.
“After Finland or Germany you make a phone call. You never know, they might say: ‘No, we’re not interested,’ and so you talk to somebody else and if they’re not interested then OK. It’s done.
“You’re not in control in that situation and that’s the situation Citroen put me in. They tried to execute me and destroy my career with what they said. They simply tried to destroy my career. Once I made a few calls after Germany, within a week I had an offer, then another one and then we started to talk seriously with Toyota and things came together quickly. That showed what a lot of people thought. That showed the job I was doing in 2018 was fine. I made one mistake.”
This interview is interspersed with talk of water under the bridge. Or an apparently page-turning, “Anyway…” from Meeke. But all roads seem to lead back to what remains one of the most shocking decisions in the history of the world championship.
Curiously, what you would have thought would have been one of the most painful points of 2018 actually brought redemption and justification for Meeke. Finland. And Mads Ostberg driving his car to second place.
“What happened in Finland [Ostberg’s result] confirmed I was right,” says Meeke. “When we started developing the new car in 2016, my first question was about who would be backing up the development. Volkswagen had [Carlos] Sainz and [Marcus] Gronholm as well as their regular drivers. Fundamentally, Citroen got it wrong. They knew that. All the changes I was fighting for and never got the chance to try came in Finland last year. If I’m wrong and Citroen think they’re right, why don’t they go back to the Monte 2017 set-up and put a bomb in there for Ogier?
“Anyway, that’s water under the bridge.” And, finally, it is. And Meeke’s over it. Granted, the previous few paragraphs might sound a touch irate here and there, but that’s not how they came across. He’s very matter of fact, very straightforward. The old emotion, the defensive intensity’s gone.
“All I want to do now is enjoy my rallying,” says the 39-year-old. “I want to get that feeling back. The best period of my career was 2016. I was just loving it. I could do [fastest] times at will and I could dominate rallies. People might talk about road position [at that time], but Sebastien Ogier was lying second to me, while running first on the road. If I wasn’t there, there wouldn’t have been any talk of road position. And even when he did have the same conditions as me on the second day in Finland, we were far out front. Clearly, that was the best period in my career. We battled for the lead in Monte and Sweden, we won Portugal, won Finland. I just want that feeling back. Who’s to say if that’ll be enough to beat Ott? We all know how fast he is. Like everybody, I want to win rallies and have a strong championship and there’s going to be good moments and tough moments, but above all, I want to enjoy it like 2016.”
Enjoying 2019 means success and success means beating the man everybody’s talking about right now. Tanak.
Meeke agrees: “Ott is clearly the fastest in the championship, we all knew he had this blinding speed, but now it’s blinding speed on every stage. He’s able to dominate rallies and he could have won the last six events on the trot and easily been world champion.
“I want to start from a clean sheet. I might be one of the elder statesmen of the championship, but I’ve only ever done three full seasons [actually he’s done two] and a guy like Elfyn Evans, who’s 10 years my junior has more experience in the WRC and a World Rally Car than I do. So, I still have a lot to learn in terms of WRC experience. Sometimes there are expectations of me, that I’ve been about for so long, but I have to temper that. But once I have something beneath me that I can trust and I can enjoy, that’s when the speed comes naturally. And when the speed comes naturally, that’s when it becomes quite simple. That’s the feeling every driver chases. That’s the feeling I want.”
That feeling’s on tap at Toyota. It wasn’t just Tanak who was flying the Yaris flag high late last season, Jari-matti Latvala was bang on the money as well. Working alongside a pair of hard-charging Baltic boys is not going to be easy, but it’s a chance Meeke relishes.
“Like I said, the atmosphere is fantastic in the team,” he says. “Jari’s the kind of guy you can easily lose an hour with. He and I were out in Japan doing a drive day at the end of last year. We were on a bus for two-and-a-half hours and we just sat and chatted. We made our WRC debut on the same event: Rally GB in 2002. We talked all through that era and then about JWRC, when he did some events in a Suzuki. It was mega. The difference is, he starts his 200th WRC round this year, whereas Monte will be my 68th start in a World Rally Car.”
And Tanak? What does he expect from sharing a team with him?
“He’s quiet, straightforward, there’s no bullsh*t,” he adds. “I’ve always got on well with him. Our careers followed similar paths. He’s been kicked out of a team trying to run before you can walk… In the last two years, he’s taken that jump – but he’s got the experience of five full seasons now.
“There’s no doubt I’m in the strongest combination, but Tommi’s been fantastic. I’ve been away eight months and I feel no pressure to do anything immediately. We all know you can have a strong season by arriving to Mexico [in] sixth or seventh position in the championship – that’s prime position, nearly. To get to Mexico first on the road means starting a series of gravel events near the front. Don’t get me wrong I want a strong Monte and Sweden, but I have to bed myself in. Ninety-five per cent of what you do comes from the feeling in the car. The last few per cent is the feeling in the team.”
And that feeling is just fine right now.
With that, Meeke’s new co-driver Seb Marshall finds us and reminds Kris of the alternative use of the time allocated to the team photograph. Our work is done and conversation turns to the more mundane – including, from a tanned Meeke, what had clearly been a warm Christmas in his home in Andorra.
“We took the kids to the Caribbean for 10 days too,” says Meeke. “It was mega. Just mega. You know, if rallying stops again, it’s not a drama. I’ve two brilliant kids and I’ve had a brilliant career – OK, it’s been a wee bit up and down at times, but there’s more to life than rallying, you know.”
Meeke’s reboot is complete. ■
“Tommi is just an honest guy” Meeke on Makinen