sackrebleu's world

I originaly posted this to my livejournal but seeing that I decided to kinda a bit of move here to tumblr I can as well repost it here.

Citroen’s tactics bad, Ford’s tactics acceptable?
Yes this is my impression after reading some of the comments of some people. I read something like “Ford is using tactics only because Citroen is using it“ which is really stupid. It kinda reminds me being a little kid who was justifying some of my actions by “other kids were doing it too“.
 
Another thing: “Citroen made Ogier to stop for 10 minutes, Latvala only slowed down“ – stupid, again. Does it mean that when somebody is “only slowing down“ it’s okay. Or when some driver lose less than one minute while acting according to team orders it’s okay but when it’s more it’s suddenly bad. I just don’t think it’s time what matters, it’s the purpose. Okay, I agree that Ogier stoping for such a long time is really ridiculous but that doesn’t mean it’s any worse than what Ford did.
 
Anoother point – “Ford didn’t apply tactics in a Power Stage, Citroen did“. This was really interesting from my point of view and I think when someone decide to do tactics he/she should at least do it properly and according to me Ford failed in that. The purpose of tactics is to give your driver as big advantage (or as many points) as possible because every single point counts – we could see that at the end of 2009 season when Loeb won the title by a single point. So why did Ford made Jari-Matti Latvala to slow down and hand the win to Mikko Hirvonen and then they let him to steal that one Power Stage bonus point from him? I would really laugh if Hirvonen would need just one single point to became a champion at the end of the season. At the tactics field in Australia – Citroen has clearly beaten Ford. I don’t think it’s something to be proud of but at the end of the season nobody will be interested in it – everybody would be interested only in the final outcome, which is the only thing which matters.
 
IRC is better than WRC because there is no tactics?
Again, wrong. Look at what Peugeot did at Rally Monte Carlo at the beginning of this year. Then also – Andreas Mikkelsen slowing down during one stage at Azores I think. Okay, nobody has ever confirmed that it was Škoda team tactics applied but if nothing – it looked highly suspicious. Also – Hänninen not starting at Mecsek Rally because he is preparing for his SWRC title fight or something like that? Very suspicious too.
 
Tactics just is in probably every sport which is played/did on proffesional level. I am not fan of tactics and I would like to see nothing of it in rallying but I am just not so naive to believe it could be entirely without tactics. So I am considering tactics as a dark part of the sport and if nothing else – I find it very interesting.
 
Does Ogier have right to act like he does?
The last thing I would like to speak about. Everybody who knows me also knows that I am a huge fan of Sébastien Ogier (and his beautiful accent :-P). I just think that Ogier was acting like a petulant little kind in Australia with his angry “no comment“ statements. Yes, he still have a mathematical chance to win a title but on the other hand – Loeb has given him a huge chance to catch him and even lead the championship standings after Rally Australia. And what did he do? He bin his huge chance two stages later! And it’s not the first time he has thrown away  a win in this season – look at Mexico and Argentina where he crashed out of the lead too so if he wants to blame someone, he can blame only himself. And maybe he could learn to cope with pressure better and maybe he should also try to learn something about respect to other drivers, especially to certaing seven times world champion who also happens to be his teammate.
 
Ogier maybe has a mathematical chance to win the title but with three rallies to go and Hirvonen being only 15 points behind Loeb, they would be really stupid in Citroen to let both Sebs fight and risk losing the title to Hirvonen who really doesn’t deserve to win the championship after what he showed this season. Or better said – not showed.
 
Team atmospehere
It’s also very interesting to read the drivers quotes from both teams. Ford’s Jari-Matti Latvala obviously is a team player and even though he is disappointed he had no problem to help Mikko Hirvonen. Hirvonen on the other side is really grateful and has no problem to express it – nice.

Sébastien Ogier on the other hand is acting like an immature child whose favourite toy was just taken away from him. Sébastien Loeb somehow unpleasantly suprised me also when he thanked to his team, mechanics etc after he scored 4 points for Power Stage victory and 10th place overall but there was nothing about thanking his teammate for slowing down. Probably it has something to do with the fact that they really have to push Ogier to do it but still – when Dani Sordo slowed down for him, he was always grateful.
If I had to chose between those teams where to work (I wish I had) I probably wouldn’t like to enter that atmosphere at Citroen even though I am big Sebs fan!
 
End of the rant I guess. I am not going to read it after me so sorry for the spelling mistakes. I am not sorry for the grammar ones because I really did my best.

tagged: wrc, irc, sébastien loeb, sébastien ogier, mikko hirvonen, jari-matti latvala, andreas mikkelsen, juho hänninen, dani sordo, the accent, tactics, rally australia 2011, rant, ford, citroen, my opinions

Tumbr. I hope this will be the appropriate place where can I spam people with interesting (mostly) WRC pictures. Because livejournal just wasn’t meant for photos, unfortunately.. Oh well, this is probably the most stupid article I have ever wrote, fuck stupid intros.

Love, me.

PS: I have to say I love my Mr Loeb background which is available to make in this theme only which is in a way not very good because this theme doesn’t support tagging so I have make them somehow.. complicated-ly. (Woah, I suppose I just invented a new word.)

tagged: pointless ramblings