Powerslide Blog

  Arguing about how fast a driver has been is a story as old as time. “No, Tanak is faster”, “Hell no, Kalle is way faster” etc etc etc. So I have been doing some numbers, and I am confident that I can tell you how fast all the drivers have been so far this season, 8 rounds in. To calculate this, I used every driver’s second per kilometre deficit in every stage where they set a representative time. SSS, punctures, stages where the driver had mechanical issues etc are obviously excluded. The final second per kilometre deficit is compared to an “ideal pace” let’s say, where a driver has won all of the stages that I’ve accounted for. Before we get into it I would like to mention 2 drivers, Breen and Suninen. Breen’s pace in Sweden was actually the fastest, just 0,163 s/km off the ideal pace, with eventual winner Ott Tanak, just 0,02 s/km off Breen. Teemu Suninen has only competed in one rally so far, so he hasn’t done enough stages to get a proper sample of his speed. He was 0,55 s/km...

The silly season in the WRC is something many look forward to. This year’s silly season has been fairly quiet so far, with not many, if any, rumours about drivers changing teams for 2024. Some driver changes turn out to be fairytales, like Sebastien Ogier’s move to Volkswagen for 2013, a partnership that won 4 drivers and 4 constructors’ championships. But many can be the stuff of nightmares. So here are 7 of the worst driver changes in the WRC.   1.           Colin McRae to Citroen – 2003 Colin McRae left Ford after 2002, after M-Sport elected to cut costs and had to “regretfully elect not to renew McRae's contract when it expired”. McRae joined Citroen for 2003 in a one year contract worth up to 5 million pounds. Richard Burns had advised the Scotsman against the move, sighting his struggles with his move to Peugeot the previous year, but McRae wasn’t too fussed. Citroen had an all-star lineup in 2003, featuring Loeb, McRae and Sainz, ...

  At the end of each WRC seasons, we tend to focus on the positives. Who won the most rallies, how good was the championship, who was the fastest, etc. What we tend to talk about for a bit and then forget pretty fast, is drivers who had absolute stinkers. But today we focus on the bad, and not the good. This is the WRC hall of shame, here are 7 of the worst seasons by WRC drivers.   1.              Xevi Pons – Kronos Citroen 2006   If you know me, then you know my feelings towards Xevi Pons. Unfortunately (for you) I cannot go into rant mode about his 2006 season, because I need to maintain the front that this is an impartial blog. Now, despite saying that, I have to ask. Why was this man allowed to be Loeb’s teammate in the Xsara. In 2005, Pons drove a Citroen Xsara as Manfred Stohl’s teammate in the OMV Citroen team, with lackluster performances, apart from his outing in his home rally in Catalunya, w...