MEEKE THIS IS MY BEST WRC CAR YET

Briton say she feels right at home after toyota debut

Kris Meeke is back and he’s back right at the very forefront of the World Rally Championship – that’s Toyota team principal Tommi Makinen’s appraisal of the Northern Irishman’s Monte Carlo debut last week.

Meeke, who was sixth after two punctures, dominated the powerstage to take maximum bonus points from the season-opener.

“Kris’s result is absolutely brilliant,” said Makinen.

“This is so good for him for his first rally with us.”

consistent conditions was Brazil and I went out there and won. Everybody said ‘Ah, here you go again dominating…’ but in the back of my mind I knew Juho Hanninen had taken 10 or 11 seconds out of us in some stages. I knew it would be tough and in the end the Skodas annihilated us. Here it feels the other way around.”

The Monte Carlo Rally was Meeke’s first with new co-driver Seb Marshall. The Englishman was equally pleased with his first result alongside the five-time world rally winner.

“It was a great event and a great way to finish the weekend with the fastest time on the powerstage,” Marshall told MN. “We’ve both been absolutely buzzing, we’ve enjoyed it so much. The car’s doing exactly what he wants – you can see the smile he’s got. We knew the powerstage was up for grabs, so we decided to go for it – but we didn’t expect to take four seconds out of everybody! We worked really hard with the notes, with the onboards and with the gravel crew. On the notes, we put some more stuff in – where we thought we could carry some more speed we added a ‘flat’ just to make sure Kris kept it pinned. It worked. Coming down to the stop line [of the powerstage], he said: ‘It’s going to be a good year,’ and it certainly feels like we’ve started something here.”

On the subject of the broken wheel rims – which also cost Tanak his hopes of a Monte Carlo win – Makinen said: “This is our standard asphalt rim. We have run this since we started. We have a reinforced rim which is a little bit heavier, but that doesn’t affect the performance, back at the factory. We will take it for Corsica.

“The problem we had with the rims is clearly a question of why… this is our third time here and in the two last years we had quite a bit more snow and when there’s some snow on the side of the road then you don’t get the same amount of corner-cutting.

“As well as that, the conditions were warmer and everybody was going in the cuts. When it’s really cold the road and the side of the road is more frozen and you don’t get the same problems from cutting the corners. This is some experience thing for us, but you know this is a brilliant result for us and an absolutely brilliant result for Kris. To do what he did in the powerstage and not just take a small margin, but four seconds is something special.”

“It was a brilliant result for Kris” Tommi Makinen