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Citroen drop Ogier for Hirvonen (24 posts)

Topic tags: Citroen, Mikko Hirvonen, Sebastien Ogier

Viewing post 16 to 24 (24 total posts)

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AndrewTanner said 1 year, 6 months ago:

Well, I certainly didn’t see that one coming. Ogier living Citroen I expected but Hirvonen replacing him? Wow. Hirvonen just be playing the long game, how long was Loeb’s contract extension, 2 years? Ogier and Latvala would be a great pairing, it would be very much youth vs. experience with Citroen.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 6 months ago:

I don’t think so, @andrewtanner – Loeb is 37, while Hirvonen is 31; compare that to Ogier and Latvala, who are 27 and 26 respectively. The youngest driver at the moment is Evgeny Novikov, who is 21.

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Estesark said 1 year, 6 months ago:

I’m pretty disappointed with Hirvonen’s decision. If the team really treat both their drivers equally, then I think he will have a great chance of winning the title, but I expect they’ll continue to see Loeb as their team leader. What if Loeb doesn’t retire in two years’ time, after he has won two more titles? Even if he does retire, if Hirvonen only gets his hands on the title after Loeb has retired, it will feel only half as valuable.

Even so, remember when Jenson Button went to McLaren? Not many people that that was a good decision. This year he’s finished ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the WDC standings, while the team he left, which became Mercedes, has made pretty much no progress in two years. Only time will tell if Hirvonen has made a similarly good decision.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 6 months ago:

@Estesark – I can only speculate as to why Hirvonen moved from Ford to Citroen, but I think he probably feels that the DS3 is much more competitive than the Fiesta. After all, the DS3 won ten of the thirteen rallies this season. He may feel that playing second fiddle to Loeb is an acceptable compromise for a more-competitive car.

On the other hand, Citroen’s public spat with Ogier and the early termination of his contract (especially considering that he was one of “their” drivers) may mean that they have had to make compromises when searching for a new driver – for instance, Hirvonen may have a clause in his contract that guarantees him the same amount of support from the team as Loeb gets, up until a certain point in the season when Citroen will back one driver for the remainder of the season, and they will make that decision based on the results of both drivers.

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Adam Tate said 1 year, 6 months ago:

After it all setting in, I still find this shocking. Giving up Ogier was stupid. But he and Loeb were like the Fernando and Lewis combo but for the WRC. If Ogier doesn’t go to Ford I will be surprised. I’d love to see him win the Championship next year, breaking Loeb and Citroen’s current streak would be sweet revenge after the way they treated him this year.

I can’t understand why Loeb feels threatened by anybody. 8 championships in a row. 8!!!! That’s one more title than Schumi has in F1 and Loeb has them all in a row. If that is not dominance, nothing is.

Last thought, if VW and Mini don’t try and sign Ogier, they are crazy. Hirvonen may win titles for Citroen when Loeb retires, but Ogier is the man that has the real chance of taking down his former team mate.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 6 months ago:

The problem with signing for VW or Mini is that they are still in the development phase. If VW enter in 2012, they will only enter at selected events to get feedback for a full 2013 campaign. I can’t see Ogier signing up for that – unless Citroen agreed to field a satellite car for him to run in events where he does not drive for VW.

As for Mini, there is no word on whether they will do a full season in 2012 – but if they do, I can’t see them cutting Meeke or Sordo loose, and I doubt they can run a three-car manufacturer team.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 6 months ago:

I think what Ford need to do is expand their privateer teams out to two-car operations. Citroen offer virtually no support to their three satellite teams (Petter Solberg WRT, Van Merksteijn Motorsport and ICE1 Racing), but most of the Ford customer teams are running cars prepared by M-Sport. The problem is that they’re brimming with talent, but there are only a handful of cars that they can run. However, if they provide more aid to customer teams, they can consolidate their talent and prevent drivers from going elsewhere.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 6 months ago:

Apologies for the triple post, but I’ve just found this:

http://www.wrc.com/news/tanak-gets-another-fiesta-chance/?fid=15833

Ott Tanak will get another chance to drive the Fiesta RS WRC (alongside Jari-Matti Latvala) in next week’s Rallye du Var. Malcolm Wilson denies that the event is an audition for a 2012 drive in a works Ford, but in the same breath he says that the team are eager to assess Tanak’s tarmac potential.

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Adam Tate said 1 year, 5 months ago:

No apology needed :)

Thanks for the link, quite interesting.

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