Citroen’s troubled WRC lead driver, Kris Meeke, told WRC Live Radio his opinions on why 2017 has been such a bad season for Citroen Racing, most of all for his poor results so far.
“What we need in the team is a bit of stability and now we have Christophe Besse, our new Technical Director. I knew him from when he was at Citroen before,” Meeke said.
“He’s been away in racing and has come back to rallies. He seems to be quite a calming influence in the engineering side of things. But generally in the team, with drivers chopped and changed in the middle of the year and nobody knows what’s happening, it just affects the spirit, it affects the moral.
“I just want the stability and to feel confident again. We still have work to do, but the important thing is to try to feel comfortable. It comes from everything.
“In fact if you’re confident in your car, it breeds confidence in the team, confidence starts from there. There are certain reasons why we don’t feel confident. When things have been chopped and changed without big reason you don’t really know what’s happening or who’s in control.
“Corsica and Germany showed how quick it (the car) can be on asphalt. The car’s fast on gravel too, we led in Portugal, we led in Sardinia, we were running just behind Elfyn (Evans) in Argentina before we had our problems.
“There have been lots of different issues. The nervousness of the car hasn’t been our main problem this year. There are times when it makes a mistake, and all the time I’ve purely been to blame for a mistake. There have been a few mechanical troubles.
“Every driver who has driven the car on gravel has said they don’t feel secure when they’re driving it. You need a car that’s wrapped around you. When you are going through the stage you need the car doing what you tell it, and not the car telling you what it’s going to do. That’s a tricky situation.
“When we were able to get a result doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect, but it gives certain people within the team the chance to say everything’s fine. We just need a calm approach, get the confidence back and continue to analyse how we can give ourselves more confidence on the gravel, and create a bigger operating window.
“Christophe has only been in his job full time in the last two to three weeks, but it is not one thing which has been our issue all year. We’ve had quite a few mechanical troubles, I’ve made some mistakes, and we just need to work through things and get more confidence with the car in certain conditions.”
https://rallysportmag.com/meeke-pours-out-his-woes-in-pre-rally-finland-interview/
https://rallysportmag.com/meekes-spanish-win-ends-citroen-slump/
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“There have been lots of different issues. The nervousness of the car hasn’t been our main problem this year. There are times when it makes a mistake, and all the time I’ve purely been to blame for a mistake. There have been a few mechanical troubles.
