He stopped and stalled it so he would still have a job next year with Ford. They told him not to beat Markko so he needed to lose some time. If you had taped it as i have you can see the finish in the shot just ahead of him. That is the ONLY REASON why he got 3rd place and not second. "TEAM ORDERS"

 

Yep - just got to see a full DVD rip I found on the 'net (Tivo didn't record it for me... Grrrr) and those were Ford team orders. He stalled it by accident, but because he was BRAKING HARD between the yellow and red flags to make sure he came in behind Martin.

Wow. That Peugot 307 is going to be a MONSTER. I'm going to throw some Scooby Snacks in on Grunholm for the next rally after seeing him blitz in Monte Carlo.
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ya i don't dought that marcus will win the championship. That car is SO fast.

 

okay, here is how voting on WRC.com looks for the Swedish rally. amazingly enough, Martin leads Gronholm in the polls!

Sebastien Loeb (10%)

Marcus Gronholm (31%)

Markko Martin (33%)

Carlos Sainz (5%)

Petter Solberg (20%)

me, i've got 40 Scooby Snacks on Gronholm for the win (see the rally betting thread). i figure it'll be Gronholm, Martin, and Solberg on the Podium with Loeb not too far behind.

 

wrc.com has a lot (a lot) of Estonian readers and every one of them loves Markko. Any poll on wrc.com w/ markko in it, you really have to look at second place to get an accurate polling of public opinion.

 

i don't think that the 307 even needs to be perfect to win in Sweden. Gronholm has won the event the past two years running, so he has got the experience. Sweden doesn't kill as many cars as a lot of the other rallies, so i don't think that the 307's durability will come into question unless Marcus screws up. as long as they get the top gear ratio long enough (unlike Monte Carlo) i see the Peugot camp on the top of the podium.

 

Loeb is a monster. Damn that guy can drive.


On another subject... Where the hell were you Don? I was really hoping you would have come along on Sunday. We still had 14 cars there. And there's lots of pictures on the Bay Area forum. I'm reallly sorry you didn't make it. I'm not mad, i'm just alittle disappointed..

see ya soon -rich

 

Rich,
i had some things come up sunday night that kept me out way too late to be driving the next morinng. i really feel bad about not making it, but i wasn't going to be rested enough to be a safe person to be on the road with on Sunday. i'm damn well going to make sure that i make it up there for the next one.

 

the next one will be on the 14th of March (sunday). Most likely up in the clear lake area. An all TARMAC drive for some and and TARMAC/DIRT for others.

 

14 March? I just might have to make an appearance there for that one. I know there are some good roads near Kelseyville that I haven't been able to drive yet.

 

http://rally.racing-live.com/en/head...18222212.shtml

Jussi Valimaki just completed a test with a Subaru S9 spec WRC car at Prodrive testing facilities in Wales. Its the second time they've had him test a WRC spec car.

Something of note from the article

Potential new driver? Obviously not for this season... but maybe in the future.

 

damn, thats quite good. i'd be interested to see what would happen if Petter tested the car.

 

Well, actually, I misiterpretated the article and got some of my facts wrong.

The S9 is the current evolution of the Impreza WRC, not the next one. So, we do know what Petter would do with that car, he'd win the world championship




But its still good news about the driver

 

agreed. there is nothing wrong with having more fast guys sitting in the driver's seats of Subarus.