Dytut

Lappi is a bit of a wildcard, will be interesting to see how he'll do. Tidemand will be aiming for keeping up with Suninen, anything faster than that and he'll be outperforming his expectations.

Monte closing in. Time for silly predictions! I think Monte will be won by Ogier once again. He'll keep the speed up and have his usual 30 seconds advantage at the start of sunday. Most likely Tänak and Neuville fighting for the rest of the podium after some minor mistakes by both. And I bet Loeb will be up there fighting for the lead for a while, but getting into some minor accident on saturday.

Notes in the right shows alphabet following code 191 and forwards in the extended ASCII table. So you can translate the symbols on the left page by using that. I'm at work so won't do it, but if anyone has the time and inclination....

Haha I've been watching old WRC on YT as well, but I'm watching the half hour daily highlights they've put out. Started at 1997 and I'm also on the 2007 season as of know! Good times  B) Heh, I went all out a few years ago and tried to find season reviews from every year from 1973 onward. Unfortunately way too much was missing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWQMxXIceNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWQMxXIceNg A bit like Finland but less jumps, and the road appears to be softer and slippier than the harder farmers tarmac of Finland.

The bottom part has changed quite a lot too: My guess is the bottom indentation is to lessen the chance of ripping the whole package of the body. They don't have Toyotas budget to waste on ripped bodywork ;-)

Rear wheel aero has changed a bit from the one Ogier tried last year, hasn't it? Looks more open on the top.

I really like that one!

Good spot. How did we miss that before?  I bet @ChristinaMc edited the text afterwards just to mess with us ;-) 

I suspect the WRC quality is somewhat due to the need for live transmission which limits bandwidth. Though I do feel they could probably improve quite a bit by just getting cameras that can handle changing lights better. Hope they make some effort for improvement over 2019.

So all teams done with their lineup now, right? Looks like we'll have the major battle between Tänak, Ogier and Neuville. And most of us seems to hold Tänak as the favourite for the title. Citroën has a fast car, but a big question mark is if it's gotten versatile enough to compete for the full season. Hyundai needs to step it up a bit if Neuville is to have a chance. What do you think of potential upsets? Both Meeke and Latvala _might_ challenge, but I have a hard time seeing either of them really beating Tänak. Mikkelsen... nah, he was so lackluster last year that I have a hard time seeing him bouncing back.  Lappi? Don't think it's his year yet. Suninen and Evans? So hard to say. Suninen is still developing, so I think he might be fighting for podiums a bit more this year but not consistently. Evans has shown speed at times, and I suspect he will try his damndest this year to take wins now that he kind of is the no.1 driver in the team. If he can start off on a high note, I wouldn't count him out.

Am  I the only one who thought the Ogier testing looked a bit... tentative? Like he didn't trust the car at all. Will be interesting to see how he adapts to it.

Awesome! Will be great to see if Pontus can challenge the big dogs! 

150 levels of surface degradation sounds great.  Poland and Spain looks real nice. 

So dirt show today? What time? Body is 10 dirt shows too short.

I really hope M-Sport will manage to stay in it. If only Ford could get off their lazy behinds and shove some peanut money their way... 

@ChristinaMc : If it's not too late to suggest something small... Maybe add that there's a small chance in career mode that we (or the AI) might miss the next rally if we have a really severe accident. Would be really fun, especially in hardcore damage mode.

WRX? but yeah, that would be cool.  My bad, meant to write WRX but slipped a button :-)

So with VW exiting WRX aswell... M-Sport can snatch Solberg for a return to battle with Loeb on select rallies. Come on M-Sport, make it happen! :-D 

THANK YOU!!!!! This is almost the best news so far!

Ah, the article was updated since I posted it. Shame about Paddon, but I can see how Hyundai wants to see if Mikkelsen can improve given another full season.  Edit: Oh, it's a two year deal for Loeb. That was a bit unexpected. 

https://www.wrc.com/en/wrc/news/december/loeb-hyundai/page/5952--12-12-.html <- incredibly official now. Biggest thing is that he will start at Monte, which Hyundai said earlier that they will not have any changes in lineup for :-P So guess all bets are off.

Yeah that one sounded awesome! But yeah, looks like it likes to wiggle it's tail a weeeee bit too much ;-)

Wonder what they'll do with the rest of the driver lineup. My guess would be they'd either axe Paddon completely, or they'll cycle four drivers in two cars over the season. Of those options, I'd wager on them rotating all four drivers. Loeb will probably not do more than 4-6 events, so leaves more events for the other three already.

https://twitter.com/PontusTidemand/status/1067520396273037312 Not saying where he's headed, but I'd guess off to VW for the WRC2 Pro season. Might be a seat at M-Sport though.