RSI

A question from Anders in the comments section which deserves special attention:


"When 2011 WRC season started in Sweden this year a bunch of companies (including mine) helped PG Andersson to rent a Fiesta. Now when the regulations was changed and the WRC teams did not have the same ability to change stuff and give privateers different stuff than the works cars we all felt that this could be a big chance to upset the big works tema drivers. Antony, do you think PG and Mads Ostberg was given the "exact" same cars as Mikko and Jari-Matti ? Or maybe I should ask, what big differeces were there?"




Obviously, as I am no longer involved at all in the sport, I cannot answer this.  


Nevertheless, I have seen from the results that the performances of Östberg and Andersson were very, very good. I would say they were unusually fast for privateers, and Sweden was a perfect place to see this because both Östberg and Andersson have pretty much equal experience of this type of rally as the two factory drivers.  I believe that their raw speed came as a surprise to the management.  


From what I have seen in the past, surprise performances like Östberg's are not taken as a good thing by the team management.  In front of the camera it's all smiles but behind closed doors the tone is something else.  The team has committed itself to it's official drivers for the long run and are most likely not happy if a privateer comes and takes points away from their lead drivers, who have the objective of fighting for the driver's Championship.  Not mentioning the diverted media attention and all the difficult questions the boss has to answer regarding his lead drivers suddenly having trouble against lesser ones as far as status is concerned.  


The subsequent lack of reliability and performance seen from privateers in the later events is a clear indication to me that things have already been adjusted.  I would not be surprised if Sweden was the first and last time we'd see a privateer drive consistently faster than officials this season.