real life 2020 FIA World Rally Championship

[Dytut 92]

Grumpy, grumpy Ogier. Love when he just tries to pretend like nothing has happened while fuming. 

[dwkGravey 0]

juu1ius said:

bogani said:

Ouch. It wasn't only Ogier being grumpy this morning.

"The organizers can go screw themselves" - Ott Tänak after SS3 wasnt too happy about the lack of plowing.

It had to be really bad thou. If you look at the splt 3 he lost +2.4s to Mikkelsen, splt4 already  +9.6s and in the stage end +18.6s. Overall classification - from SS3 2nd +2.4 down from Thierry, ss4 +19.4s from Thierry.  With last 6km atleast 15s lost thanks to deep snow. 

I stayed up to watch SS2 last night (bit of a disappointment with the technical issues) but as it ended close to midnight here I was falling asleep. I watched the highlights show on Redbull.tv and noticed the +19.4s and wondered how it could have been so bad when his SS2 was so fast. Definitely going to watch SS4 later.

[RallyDriven 398]

Wow, so sounds as if Ott and Meeke has a collision on stage 13, with Ott leaving the road for a minute and a half!

[bogani 765]

Wish every car had an onboard camera like Henning Solberg! Too bad the stream picture quality is SHITE.

[RallyDriven 398]

So here’s a video of the incident

https://twitter.com/paddocknews/status/964940002709921793

Hard to tell who is to blame. Also, Neuville over Colin’s Crest was pretty mad!

[Dytut 92]

RallyDriven said:

So here’s a video of the incident

https://twitter.com/paddocknews/status/964940002709921793

Hard to tell who is to blame. Also, Neuville over Colin’s Crest was pretty mad!

I think it looks like Tänak should've held back until there was room too pass. He would've gotten the time back for it. Now he took a chance and paid for it.

[juu1ius 5]

Dytut said:

RallyDriven said:

So here’s a video of the incident

https://twitter.com/paddocknews/status/964940002709921793

Hard to tell who is to blame. Also, Neuville over Colin’s Crest was pretty mad!

I think it looks like Tänak should've held back until there was room too pass. He would've gotten the time back for it. Now he took a chance and paid for it.

There's full analyse on the incident done by EE fan forum :D but  I guess what happened was that Meek offered pass and Ott took it, unfortunately it was really narrow place. Meek pulled over but snowbank sucked his car too much in and he tried to 'compensate' a bit but colludes with Ott's car. Just bad luck, imo it didn't matter much - not many points lost and a better starting position in Mexico.

[tbtstt 2,440]

Superb drive from Breen, especially as it looks like the C3 is still a total dog to drive. Great stuff from from Katsuta in WRC2 as well.

One more to go, come on Breen!

[bogani 765]

tbtstt said:

Superb drive from Breen, especially as it looks like the C3 is still a total dog to drive. Great stuff from from Katsuta in WRC2 as well.

One more to go, come on Breen!

Really? I thought the C3 looked pretty okay. Much better than last year.

Meeke really needs to step up his game. Maybe a mental coach? He really can't seem to handle the pressure of being a first driver to carry a team.

Ogier being sneaky. What if the championship comes down to those 4 points he managed to take? 

[tbtstt 2,440]

bogani said:

tbtstt said:

Superb drive from Breen, especially as it looks like the C3 is still a total dog to drive. Great stuff from from Katsuta in WRC2 as well.

One more to go, come on Breen!

Really? I thought the C3 looked pretty okay. Much better than last year.

Meeke really needs to step up his game. Maybe a mental coach? He really can't seem to handle the pressure of being a first driver to carry a team.

Ogier being sneaky. What if the championship comes down to those 4 points he managed to take? 

I thought all the Citroen drivers looked like they were fighting the car during some of the onboard shots. 

[DiRTKiNG808 15]

tbtstt said:

Superb drive from Breen, especially as it looks like the C3 is still a total dog to drive. Great stuff from from Katsuta in WRC2 as well.

One more to go, come on Breen!

Wow! Breen did amazing, super happy for him. I'm disappointed on how poor M-Sport Performed. I know it has to do with road position but even Evens struggled. I also think that Tanak should have waited a little bit and Meeke needs to kick it up a couple of notches. I hope M-Sport can fight back in Mexico, they need the points.

[DiRTKiNG808 15]

bogani said:

tbtstt said:

Superb drive from Breen, especially as it looks like the C3 is still a total dog to drive. Great stuff from from Katsuta in WRC2 as well.

One more to go, come on Breen!

Really? I thought the C3 looked pretty okay. Much better than last year.

Meeke really needs to step up his game. Maybe a mental coach? He really can't seem to handle the pressure of being a first driver to carry a team.

Ogier being sneaky. What if the championship comes down to those 4 points he managed to take? 

I thought that was super smart on M-Sports part. Might as well try and get some points on a bad weekend.

[F2CMaDMaXX 518]

Meekes turbo was going (and went) out, wasn't it?

[DiRTKiNG808 15]

Yes it did. After the impact with the snow bank.

[Dytut 92]

I thought Breens Citroen looked quite well behaved, didn't look like he had to fight it much. Ostberg on the other hand looked like he really had to fight it, which kind of made his performance all the more impressive.
But Meeke was just not there. Even considering road order he was still just plodding along.

[tbtstt 2,440]

DiRTKiNG808 said:

Yes it did. After the impact with the snow bank.

Yep. And then Tanak hit him! 

Some are saying that Ogier was sneaky, but I'd say it was a smart move. I'm sure that came from the team as well and he wouldn't have been doing it unprompted. Very surprised that Citroen didn't tell Meeke to do the same thing. Four more points that Ogier might have missed and a bit of damage limitation for the lost points in his Championship campaign. 

EDIT: I may not have given enough credit to Citroen. I just saw a post on another forum that Meeke didn't hand his timecard in at the end of the rally, so apparently he can get a "free" engine for Mexico:

FIA Sporting Code:

64.2.3 When a car does not finish a rally, an extra engine per seasonally allocated car number may be allowed without incurring a penalty. No more than 2 extra engines per seasonally allocated car number and per season may be sealed without incurring any penalty.
When an extra engine is used, the engine which was fitted on a retired car (seasonally allocated car number) may not be used any further during the season (see Art. 64.1.4).

[versedi 39]

FIA really needs to create a simple rule: You're late to the party on Power Stage - you can't gain any points.

Dickey and un-fair move from Sebs and Malcolms lawyers who found the loophole.

I've never liked Ogier, even more when he's salty about road positions. But that is simply too much. Duckhead. 

WDC who can't accept road position... does he really deserves that title? 

[tbtstt 2,440]

Compared to the sort of thing we have seen in the past:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct3eD7TnNrs

This was pretty minor. Ogier had a pretty dreadful weekend thanks to running order, this was a small way of limiting the damage to his Championship campaign. Fact is that, despite cheating/exploiting a loophole/whatever you want to call it, he still had to perform behind the wheel on the Power Stage for the whole thing to mean anything. 

Would I prefer not to see this sort of thing? Yes. Do I think Ogier is any less deserving of the WDC because of it? No. Ultimately I would like to see each driver tackling each rally on a level playing field, so their talent alone does the talking. That wasn't the case for a lot of drivers this weekend. Tanak was robbed of a decent position (and I wonder if the frustration of that is why he had that daft encounter with Meeke).

[bogani 765]

tbtstt said:

DiRTKiNG808 said:

Yes it did. After the impact with the snow bank.

Yep. And then Tanak hit him! 

Some are saying that Ogier was sneaky, but I'd say it was a smart move. I'm sure that came from the team as well and he wouldn't have been doing it unprompted. Very surprised that Citroen didn't tell Meeke to do the same thing. Four more points that Ogier might have missed and a bit of damage limitation for the lost points in his Championship campaign. 

EDIT: I may not have given enough credit to Citroen. I just saw a post on another forum that Meeke didn't hand his timecard in at the end of the rally, so apparently he can get a "free" engine for Mexico:

FIA Sporting Code:

64.2.3 When a car does not finish a rally, an extra engine per seasonally allocated car number may be allowed without incurring a penalty. No more than 2 extra engines per seasonally allocated car number and per season may be sealed without incurring any penalty.
When an extra engine is used, the engine which was fitted on a retired car (seasonally allocated car number) may not be used any further during the season (see Art. 64.1.4).

Sneaky and smart don't have to be different things ;)

However, it will be a pretty laughable situation next year when there is a que of factory cars deliberately arriving too late to the start of the powerstage if they are out of any points scoring position and want a better road position.

The only solution I see fit to redeem this type of thing is that you add the penalty time to the actual stage time of the SS that you arrived late to. Boom. Done.

[RallyDriven 398]

Ogier simply took advantage of the rules. But I feel that when it comes to the power stage, things like this shouldn’t be allowed. You should obviously still be able to do the stage as per normal rules, but you should be excluded from bonus points. The only exception I could see would be mechanical issues forcig a late start, but again it’s a bit of a grey area as Ogier could have easily pretended to have issues.

[carpa 307]

Wow, so much talking about regulations and loopholes it feel like we're talking about F1... :D

bogani said:

Sneaky and smart don't have to be different things ;)

That's the thing. Rules aren't perfect and will probably never be, but interpreting them in a creative way can make the difference when the battle is so tight. People might not like it, but it's like this that you can win a championship, and if you don't do these things when you most need them you aren't doing everything you can to win. Ogier tried it out of frustration and it worked

[versedi 39]

Should we expect Mexico 2018 Tactics on PS where everyone will try to go later than the other? ;) 

That will be problematic for All Live :P 

[KingOfCoins 286]

I have a feeling we might. Ogier opened up a can of worms with that PS move

[RallyDriven 398]

versedi said:

Should we expect Mexico 2018 Tactics on PS where everyone will try to go later than the other? ;) 

That will be problematic for All Live :P 

Yeah, that’s why I feel they will have to do something about this. They have tv schedules to stick to, they can’t have everyone using up all their permitted lateness to try and get better road positions. Ogier did get some kind of penalty for it, but I’m not quite sure how international time works. On national time in the UK you wouldn’t get a penalty for doing that unless you were over your permitted lateness (often 15-30 minutes depending on the rally), in which case you would be Over Time Limit (OTL) and be retired from the event

[bogani 765]

RallyDriven said:

versedi said:

Should we expect Mexico 2018 Tactics on PS where everyone will try to go later than the other? ;) 

That will be problematic for All Live :P 

Yeah, that’s why I feel they will have to do something about this. They have tv schedules to stick to, they can’t have everyone using up all their permitted lateness to try and get better road positions. Ogier did get some kind of penalty for it, but I’m not quite sure how international time works. On national time in the UK you wouldn’t get a penalty for doing that unless you were over your permitted lateness (often 15-30 minutes depending on the rally), in which case you would be Over Time Limit (OTL) and be retired from the event

As I said before, if they add the time penalty to the stage that you were late for, the loophole disapears. 30 seconds or more added to the power stage surely means zero PS-points.

Update: And he actually got a 4.20 penalty this time.
Not sure, but you get 10 seconds for each minute you're late to a TC?