RALLY ESSENTIALS
Sebastien Ogier felt about as bad as he looked on Saturday lunchtime. And he looked terrible. The Frenchman’s description of his Friday night was rather more graphic than it really needed to be (“I slept for two hours then went to the toilet to empty myself”), but it did explain his slightly sleepy approach to day two, while potentially contributing to him losing out to Andreas Mikkelsen in the race for fourth.
While the defending champ looked ill-at-ease in Finland, the Norwegian was in the ascendancy – once he’d got the better of team-mate and Hyundai new boy Craig Breen. There’s no doubting Hyundai has found at least some of the speed it’s been searching for in Germany since 2014, with the latest aerodynamic and suspension upgrades working well on the i20 Coupe WRC. Mikkelsen backed up a solid Sardinian outing with real and genuine speed this time around. He’s chased the Polo feeling since he first sat in one of the Korean cars and last week he finally found it. Now let’s see what he can do with it.
Breen made the most of a preferable place at the back of the WRC pack on Friday, but maintained much of that pace over the weekend to deliver a drive that could – and should – be enough to guide him back into a full-time WRC seat.
Hyundai’s missing link this time around was
Thierry Neuville. The Belgian started the event seven points down in the championship fight and departed Jyvaskyla 25 off Tanak. The mojo was well and truly missing last week and he needs to find it pretty quickly if he’s going to re-engage with the championship fight. Needing to rely on Breen pulling over to let him by when he hadn’t suffered any issues over the three days wouldn’t have been the weekend he wished for.
Talking of weekends you hadn’t wished for, welcome to M-sport’s world. You had to feel for Malcolm Wilson, who arrived fresh from a pretty miserable day (and night) watching Bentley’s struggle to challenge at the front of the Spa 24-Hour race, only to return to his rightful place in the mud and find the Ford Fiesta WRC in a similar struggle at the wrong end of the leaderboard. Teemu
Suninen was first Fiesta home in eighth place.
The Finn was some distance from the force he provided when he took fourth 24 months ago. He would have been followed home by stand-in teammate Gus Greensmith, who was running ninth. Unfortunately the Brit went off on the final morning, to ensure more overtime for the Cockermouth panel beaters following Hayden Paddon’s test shunt in the run-up to Rally Finland.
M-sport badly missed Elfyn Evans last week – a fact that will come as some small comfort to the Welshman currently laid up getting his back injury fixed. The sooner Evans is back behind the wheel the better, for all concerned. In the meantime, team principal Richard Millener is faced with the headache of who to put in Evans’ car for the next round. Former factory driver Eric Camilli might have been the obvious choice – and for the reason why this won’t happen, have a look at the supports’ report.