I have been suffering from withdrawal symptoms for not writing a blog post for several weeks! So I´m glad the Rallye Deutschland came to make my day! What were my expectations before the rally got underway? I was convinced that it would be the 9th consecutive victory in Germany for absolutely dominant Loeb who has obviously been in a class of his own for several years... However, I turned out to be wrong!
In terms of the factory Fords, almost everything went wrong since the beginning of the rally... Latvala had a very promising start to the event by making the fastest time on the stage 1 but then the problems hit. Team Ford made the wrong tyre call by choosing the harder compound of tyres because they were expecting the conditions to be dry. Instead it was raining right before the stage 2 and the Ford drivers Latvala and Hirvonen lost a lot of time on the slippery roads. The French Citroen drivers instead had a soft-compound version on their cars and they managed to pull a significant gap to their rivals! And the wrong tyre call was just a beginning of a series of difficulties faced by the factory Fords... Punctures (Latvala alone had four punctures during the rally!) and near-miss situations cost the Finnish Ford drivers dearly!
The real talking point during the weekend, however, was the relationship between the Citroen´s two drivers. Loeb was leading the rally after day one by only a few seconds over his team-mate Ogier and Ogier seemed very tight-lipped and annoyed about something... And it became clear soon that Citroen had given team orders to maintain the positions of their two drivers meaning that Ogier wasn´t allowed to take the lead from his team-mate... Once again I was sooo disappointed! Sports, also motorsports, should be about competing against your rivals including your team-mate! I can´t help thinking about Loeb´s new two-year contract with Citroen if it´s partly based on him being the number one driver in the team... I hope I´m wrong! In my eyes the 7-time world champion Sebastien Loeb is so an outstanding driver that he wouldn´t need to use means like that to secure his position inside the team! Though Ogier is clearly a serious threat...
In addition to all the technical failures Latvala also suffered from some kind of a stomach bug! As if all the technical stuff wouldn´t have been enough...! In spite of the team orders Loeb didn´t win in Germany! He suffered a puncture on Saturday and lost over a minute because of it which enabled Ogier to snatch the lead! So it was the first tarmac-win for Ogier leaving Loeb 2nd! But what was brilliant was the performance of the two MINI drivers! Sordo managed to snatch the last podium spot leaving Hirvonen 4th.
I was satisfied to see Kimi´s performance in Germany -although the man himself stated it would have been a better idea for him to have stayed at home! Kimi had a peculiar problem with his door flapping after he had touched a wall. But he did set some very competitive stage times and I´m sure he would have done much better on the power stage if he hadn´t had another puncture! I´m kind of sad to read that he´ll skip the Rally Australia! I love watching and following WRC but it´s definitely Kimi who brings the extra excitement to the sports...!
I´m enlightened indeed that the summer break of Formula 1 will finally be over this week and all the teams will be back in action at Spa next weekend!! At the same time I´m already waiting for the Race of Champions... I´m glad to hear that Jenson Button has confirmed his participance in the event! And I certainly hope that Heikki Kovalainen will be driving there, too... In spite of me being a passionate Sebastian Vettel fan I would definitely love to see Team Scandinavia competing in Dusseldorf!!
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