Welcome. Established in 2006 and only with the purpose to inform and comment about one of my greatest pasions: cars. Here I also report all the inside information from three events I follow: The Carrera Panamericana, the World Rally Championship (WRC) and Dakar. I hope you enjoy following my blog as much as I do creating it.
viernes, junio 17, 2011
WRC 2011 - Citroen Racing Acropolis Rally Day 1
If the audio comments are in french, sorry. But it seems that the Citroen Rally team media is not interested in the international rally followers. :/
jueves, junio 16, 2011
Hirvonen says he can win Rally Acropolis
Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen says he is determined to up his game ahead of this week's Acropolis Rally, as Ford still searches for its first gravel win in the Fiesta RS WRC.
Hirvonen won the opening round of this year's world championship with a confident drive to victory on the Swedish Rally, but since then, Citroen drivers Sebastien Loeb and Sebastien Ogier have secured the top step of the podium on the following five rounds of the WRC.
Despite admitting to a lacklustre performance last time out in Argentina, Hirvonen remains just 13 points adrift of Loeb's championship lead.
"I didn't get the best out of myself in Argentina," said Hirvonen. "On the asphalt sections, it was really tough. I was really bad there. I've got to get a grip of myself in Greece, find the speed and stay consistent.
"Of course, it is possible to beat Citroen, for the last three races, Jari-Matti [Latvala, team-mate] has been really close with them. I was happy with my speed on the last day in Argentina, but I have to find that all of the time now.
"I am still well in with the championship fight. Everything is still open, but we have to start beating [Sebastien] Loeb and Citroen."
Hirvonen, who won the last Acropolis Rally in 2009, said his Greek test had gone well prior to the event.
"Nothing broke at all on the car," he said. "The team is well known for building strong rally cars and I think the Fiesta is the same. On the test, I was a little bit worried, thinking: "I hope we haven't been lucky here," but it's not that, I believe the car is strong enough."
Loeb admitted he had been baffled by Hirvonen's hot and cold performances this year, saying: "It's difficult to understand [Hirvonen], sometimes. He is able do some very good times, so he is still going very fast and he is very close to me in the championship, so he is one of my rivals."
Hirvonen's last win on gravel was Rally Australia in 2009. He has, however, finished second to Loeb three times this season - and failed to finish lower than fourth on all six 2011 events.
sábado, junio 11, 2011
martes, junio 07, 2011
lunes, junio 06, 2011
WRC: Changes for 2012 - Monte Carlo is back and new start up rules in gravel rallies.
FIA has just confirmed that for the 2012 calendar Monte Carlo is back at the WRC, followed then by Sweden and Mexico.
The surprise is also, that Mexico is the first gravel rally and where a new set of rules will be first used:
Currently rules state that the championship leader goes first on day one of an event with the starting order for the subsequent days based on the overall positions at the end of each day.
From 2012, however, times recorded during the pre-event shakedown by Priority 1 and Priority 2 drivers will be used to help determine the start order for day one with the starting positions for the remaining days of an event based on the overall positions of P1 and P2 drivers at the end of each day, albeit reversed.
A statement from the FIA, motorsport’s world governing body, said: “From 1 January 2012 the shakedown will be used as a qualifying stage for all Priority 1 and 2 drivers to determine the start order for each individual gravel rally.
“Taking into account the shakedown times, P1 and P2 crews in order of fastest to slowest will be permitted to select their start positions. On subsequent days, all Priority 1 and 2 crews will restart in reverse order. The start position of all remaining crews will be determined according to the current regulations.”
Citroen Racing’s team manager Sven Smeets welcomed the move. He said: “We’re in favour. We don’t like the use of tactics over two days and wanted to find another solution. For the fans it will also be good because they’ll watch drivers going as quickly as possible.”
Ford team boss Malcolm Wilson was equally in favour, adding: “One thing we were dead against was losing out on the final-day drama we’ve had all season. This will provide the best solution to ensure drivers go flat-out over all three days. Hopefully it will be around for a long time.”
WRC 2011: Rally Argentina recap of an interesting moment.
Weird stuff happens sometimes in rallying. But when the winning team poins something and then affects it directly in the final result is something to consider. Read the following article via autosport.com about the incident of a runaround involving Ford and Citroen.
Rally organisers given fine
| By David Evans | Monday, May 30th 2011, 05:15 GMT |
The organisers of Rally Argentina have been fined 5,000 euros for an irregularity in the road book for the event.The stewards of the event received a protest from the Ford team in relation to a junction towards the end of the El Condor stage. The junction was a traffic roundabout. On the first run at the stage, the organisers had taped one exit of the roundabout forcing the crews to take the legal route around the roundabout. The organisers then removed the tape for the second pass of the stage.
The Citroen drivers took the shorter route while the Fords took the same route as before - at a cost reckoned to be around four seconds. Ford's Mikko Hirvonen ultimately lost the rally to Citroen's Sebastien Loeb by just 2.7s.
The organisers were fined for not communicating a clear instruction under Article 2.1 of the sporting regulations.
Ford's Malcolm Wilson said: "We put this one into the clerk of the course on Saturday morning asking for clarification. We didn't get a satisfactory answer so we then put the request into the stewards to give us a clarification of the situation. We then decided to seek clarification from the stewards.
"The big thing is there's been an advantage gained by the ambiguity in the road book. And we wanted clarification for the future. Everybody knows the rallies have been [decided by] 0.2 of a second. Everybody is investing a lot of money in this championship and we want absolute clarification as to where we are on the regulations."
Wilson said he was happy with the outcome of the stewards' meeting, adding: "We're in this business to win but at the end of the day we want clarification going forward and that's the most important thing to point out.
"We made this request when we were actually leading the rally. It isn't a case we have lost out by two seconds and he gained whatever by taking this route. It's really positive in the sense that now anything that's discussed in the team managers' meeting - there's the evidence. They've been fined for not communicating transparently what was requested."
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