7 Burst results for "Robin Perra"
The Autosport Podcast
"robin perra" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Management skills could be exactly what hi and I need to pull this team together to really take on Toyota. Well, this time last year, like you say, Hyundai were in Dire Straits, you're about to head off to Monty. I think Thierry neuville, who was the highest place finish finisher for them, was something he was something 7 or 8 minutes off to leave. But they turned it around. Can they continue that in 2023 given that some people have said they screwed up by losing their star man? Well, this is interesting thing. So Tyrion Neville is still going to be there as the team leader, but they've brought in esophagus from Toyota, which is actually quite a shrewd little signing there. And they've got cry bring from M sport to share the third car with Danny solo. So all four of those are experienced heads and I'm three of them have won rallies, so they've got plenty of experience there to deliver what they need. For me, lapi is quite an interesting sign, because yes, he's going to take some time to get used to the car and everything, but having spoken to him after his first test in the Hyundai. He actually said there wasn't much of a gap between that and the toilet. He's just driven at the car that won the world championship last season. So clearly, if lapi thinks that there isn't much of a gap between the two cars, then we are probably set for quite some challenge and some championship this year. So yeah, from that side of things, I think lapis solid he will get you podiums. He will, he will challenge for victories. He's shown that he has the pace, but for me the area is probably the team leader still. And he's your best chance at a title, but a high and dive that's in control of itself and not chasing their title for 6 months. Could be quite a fearsome prospect for the rest of the field. Yeah, I think I agree with you that I think Thierry neuville is the undisputed team leader he's been there since the start cut him an eel bleed Hyundai. It's his team, but it's a full season for esope lappi. And I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of him, a really nice guy, but once he's behind the wheel, eyes are really, really fierce competitor. Although, a lovely chap, like most of these guys are, but fiercely driven. So do you think there could possibly be a battle for number one status in that team? Going to assume that it's him our editor, Kevin Turner said on a recent podcast, it described him as always the bridesmaid never the bride. But I'm wondering is 2023, possibly Thierry time. Yeah, it could well be. It could well be for today but the problem he's got though is he's got obviously to try and stop calling and also we should mention often Evans in that mix too because he's definitely going to be in the mix as well. It's actually, yes, the entries are quite small in terms of rally one, but if you look at the quality of them, you could argue it's one of the best from terms of quality of driver that the championships had for a long time. Because they're all very capable. So yeah, it could be for Terry, but the thing with Thierry is he's got to he's got to perform better on the rallies that he doesn't like. So the rally Finland that those sort of areas. He sort of you could see last season he just felt I'm comfortable, so I'm just going to settle for four 5th or 6th. He kind of has to really push, I think, a bit harder if he really wants to win this championship because the likes of Robin pair and tan are not going to just settle in rallies where they think they're not going to be on the pace. And for Thierry, he has to cut out mistakes like Belgium last year when he crashed out the lead. You have got I don't think you can make any mistakes really this year without being punished because that's how close it could be. So for me, he's got to tardy himself up a little bit, but there's no questions about his commitment or his work ethic, he will, as you said, you cut him. He believes he will do everything possible. And I think it's summed up last year in Croatia where the car broke down. But yeah, he was willing to push it for a kilometer to get to the service. This guy just doesn't give up. He's an absolute warrior in terms of that. So yeah, it'd be interesting. As I said, lapi could be very useful to him because yeah, there was a bit of, should we say the relationship between Thierry and I wasn't the best, shall we say? And I think with lapi, he's a bit more, you know, I think he's a bit more amiable, shall we show you? It's unusual for a finite, it's a big stereotype, but when you talk to Tessa pecker, he's quite open lives to talk a lot. He likes to have a joke. You can he wears his heart on his sleeve. He's very sort of open and I think it could be a good mix. Okay, we've done two teams. We'll get on to the next one and we've made our listeners wait for our youngest ever world champion Callie Robin perra in the history of the sports. In a way, obviously winning the title last year was mega. But possibly, coming back to my thesis of this podcast that WRC is about to wake up as a sleeping giant that's been maybe waking up a little bit in recent years, but this year, if it all plays out how we think it might do with all of these top top drivers in different teams, could this be a more difficult challenge to defend his championship? I obviously agree.
The Autosport Podcast
"robin perra" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Mega. I'm not suggesting he isn't, but that is that he can't have that bonus point, if you like. And the other one is, yeah, we talked about the collective French Grand Prix, but that's not the reason why he lost the world challenge. The reason he lost the world championship was because of strategic strategy areas by Ferrari and unreliability. And also think, and Carlos Sainz hinted at this at the end of the year. He was an early stage of the season. He was bowled over by how leclerc could hang on to that car. I think that was a fast car at the start of the year, but I don't think it was an easy car. I watching the clerk is like, it's difficult to see it on with modern F one cars because they are on rails in a way that previous year hasn't. But you can see it with the cloud. You can see the body language. He's hanging on to it, and ultimately he came unstuck at the French Grand Prix by over, it was too much. But he's just great to watch on a qualifying lap. I think he got absolutely the most out of a car that ultimately wasn't good enough to win the world championship. 14th place, Carlos Sainz, I will add in. Where did the other rally drivers rank then Tom? So Kelly Robin perra was third, but how does that compare with the other drivers in the series that you were covering this year? Because the next place in P 16, he was prepared with what you'd call title rival if you could use those words. I mean, he was the only one who could really push Kelly as close as possible, but realistically there wasn't really a title fight because Carrie sort of sewn it up midyear. So Tarek was superb. Definitely deserves that spot in my eyes. The reason why he deserves that spot is his performance in Finland against Robin pair on home soil where he absolutely destroyed him in a car that really was not shouldn't be able to do that. He needed to time it. It was all over the place. He looked like he was going to crash all the time, but he actually got through and actually destroyed the opposition. So yes, the other rally drivers obviously Sebastian Loeb who is a former list topper as we've already said. He's back in the list, P 25, he's had a great year. Obviously one Monte Carlo rally, 80th career, WRC win, the oldest driver to win a WRC event at 48 years old. A side of that, he also was second and Dakar. Also was in successful extreme E and in the world rally rage, championship. So he was a busy man at 48 and race champions. Just amazing. He's just such a cool character and you know, still has it at 48. It's incredible to watch. So even though he didn't do a full year in a certain series, when we put this list together, you're taking that into account. That's pretty much the full rally raid, I think. And extremely. I mean, obviously they're shorter calendars. But I mean, but that's a great example of someone who climbs up the list in the top 50, but Tom couldn't put in that high in his top ten because he didn't do that many of the rounds. Yeah. But in this, we can bump him up a bit because he did all this. I mean, I think he's just such a cool dude. He was like the smokes a cigarette that jumps in a rally car and just does it. But what the cool thing about the Monte Carlo rally win was there was no setup changes on that car, the entire rally, he just jumped in, drive it one of the rally. No changes. It's just a freak of nature. He really is. Back in the top back in the top 50 as well for the first time since 2013 when he finished 12th in your list. So yeah, I mean, I had to go quite a way back to find it. I wasn't quite sure when his last prince would be, but that was his last world championship win, wasn't it? 13. I'm pretty sure he's one of the highest highest overall in the last 20 years as well, I'm using the top 5 of 6. I think him and Scott Dixon probably the two top non F one drivers. The other serve auger 49th, scripting to the top 50. Let's go to the other end of the list then, before we come on to a big F one chat, is we go to the end of the list. There's 50, which means there's a 51st. So how much of your time is spent with that long list? I mean, how long is it is it? 175, but how do you even mention some of the names that just missed out if you happen to hand? That's the thing. I mean, there is a big debate over some names you put quite high up to start with in the preliminary list. And then the correspondent will go back and do you and say, I'm delighted that this person is so high. But why haven't you included the second and third pick from my list? So then you're faced with the conundrum of do we include the second or third person? Or do we bump them down a bit so that the requirements have several drivers from, say, super formula, isn't there? So super formula champion to make on a jiri is in the 21 on this list. Up from 28 last year. So a really good year for Nigeria. I mean, he did win very comfortably. That championship. And I think that was one of the elements that made him such a clear for this list. But then it also therefore makes the case for other drivers from that world. Slightly more difficult. On the flip side, you could say, well, we've got Shane van gisbergen in a number ten and no other supercar drivers. Should we have included another supercars driver? So that conversation was had. We had the discussion over which. So formula drivers should go into the list. So one of those that was mentioned was Sasha finestra, who was second in super formula. Another was rear hirokawa, who was third in super formula who also won the world insurance championship and LeMond this year, vitta. What counted against hirokawa was that he was ranked at number 5 of our prototype drivers this year in Gary Watkins,
The Autosport Podcast
"robin perra" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"The insights. So that's the start point obviously you move people around if they've done more than one category. They're sort of what I like to call the Sebastian Buemi criteria and he gets moved up or down depending on his wet versus formula E things. But then also, of course, you have to have a hierarchy of the championships. So obviously the obvious ones is like what F one would take is a Pinnacle of the sport, but how good a season has it been and how good a season is everything because it changes over time. The overall order is usually pretty similar. But some championships have strong years and some have weaker. You'd expect, for example, that next year drives in the world endurance championships hypercar class will be a lot higher up the list. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, suddenly we're going to have many more teams in professional drivers in well, both wet can hipster. So yeah, absolutely. I think sports car drivers. And sports car drives are very high a few years back when we had the really quick super LMP1 cars and we had Audi Portia and Toyota. They were higher. Now it's not been quite so strong, so they drop down. So we try and factor in that sort of thing as well. But we're trying to be fair, I think, is probably the point. Something I've wondered, when you look back over those 20 list 21 lists now, how good a job do you think we've done at creating a snapshot in time of motor sport in that year? Have we largely got it right, do you think? Yeah, I think so. I mean, obviously, I'm having to say that I was involved in a lot of them, but yeah, I did a last year because obviously it was the 20th, so I went back and I added up all the scores of every single driver that appeared in it. Well, you know, it seemed like a fun thing to do over Christmas, right? So was it just before? But anyway, yeah, so, and if you do that, you come up with a list of drivers that I think most people would agree. Okay, you can argue about the exact order, but the list of drivers was the ones that you'd say, yeah, they've probably been the standout drivers internationally for the last 20 years. I think towards the back end of the list, the second half of the list is also about trying to give drivers and championships that maybe answer obvious a little bit of a spotlight and just say, we haven't forgotten about this. This person deserves deserves a mention of a couple of those on this list this year. So it's getting them, I guess it's doing two things. One is it's trying to absolutely assess the top drivers in each year. That snapshot and the other snapshot is oh and here's some other highlights that you don't want to miss. It's one other thing before I started working here as an auto sport reader. I always felt that when you read that list, I always thought I had a bit of a good oversight of if you read autosport magazine every week, you think, well, I know, I know motor sport, but you're always there's always names now. You're like, who are they? They were. There have been certain members of staff during the process you've gone. Who's that? And they got an official warning, but they weren't sacked. But yeah, so that's why you do need. You need some people who've got an overview and obviously I'm receiving for the magazine I'm receiving copies from all the championships. Yes. James has a very good overview, Tom's enthusiastic enough that he's interested in lots of series. The F one guys perhaps not so much because they're on the F one beat all the time so they don't know as much outside of F one. So you try and dip into the areas of deep expertise that you've got. Yeah, Gary Watkins as well. We rely on him heavily with the sports car ones because you can look at stint averages, for example. You don't necessarily know who's running on the old tyres, he's looking after them, he's on the new ones, what they've been told to do, et cetera. So you really need the people on the ground, but then it requires it requires people like us as well to have a bit of an overview and go, yeah, but let's not dig too carried away with that championship, you know, we've got a slot in somewhere, so yeah, it's quite an involved process. There is one driver that I know Kevin is not particularly happy about how high we placed him on the list, but we gradually wore him down, didn't we Tom? Absolutely. We'll come to that. No doubt, but there's definitely enough evidence to back up that decision, I think. We will talk about some of the new entries, some of the drivers we've lost, including a top ten name last year who's nowhere to be seen in 2022, and it's not as if we're going to make your way to the end of the podcast. We're not going to count down the list. So we'll also give you the top 5 right now. It's an F one heavy list, as you may expect, and number 5 was George Russell. Number four was Lewis Hamilton, number three, Callie Robin perra. Number two Charles Leclerc number one Max Verstappen. Let's start with talking about number one. In previous years, Lewis has been number one. It's been a no brainer. There's been very few people arguing against. Although this list isn't really about arguing drivers out, you should be arguing in your drivers from your series. But James max being number one, any sort of contentious arguments there. I don't think there is really. I mean, the records that he's achieved this year. You can't really argue with that. Obviously we're going by what the Formula One guys have decided. So in some respects, that's out of our hands because we're not going to swap the order around and go, no, we think that guanajuato should be number one. Tell me what though, that did happen in the early days of the list if you go back there was less coherence between the contributor top tens and the top 50, but oh really? Yeah, yeah, looking at in 2005, we really hedged our bits. We had, I think, we get this right, I think the F one review had Alonso number one. Raikkonen was number one in the top 50 of the F one drivers, but the overall number one was best in life. Really hedging their bets that year. Just in case you missed someone. And we do, we do look down those lists of drivers through the field. So it's not a case of just picking out, well, he got the most points. You know, back in 2018, we put charla Clare in the top ten. And that certainly wasn't based on what he finished the championship, but we could see that that promise and that he had a great year. I mean, Daniel Ricciardo's topped the list twice, Robert Koch has topped the list as well. So it's not necessarily always about who wins the championship is the automatic number one pick. But this year, the weight of evidence does support, I think, a Max Verstappen at number one. He was very close last year. It must be said. It did go pretty much open until the last two weekends of the year where our poor correspondent, we weren't able to commit to giving him a word count of who was going to be number one and number two. But in this zone, this podcast last year we had a very extensive debate about the Lewis Hamilton versus Max Verstappen and things last year that they were so close and I think I made the point that when you've got two drivers who are so close, both in terms of results and I think they are overall level of performance. The way we basically differentiated it in the end was the will to will stuff and the fact that max had overstepped the mark on more occasions. So there was just edged it whereas in previous years it had been more obvious this year. Okay, so max had that slightly dubious thing with mixing your accuracy over stone, but that wasn't a crash and then he obviously switched to the magnets back on interlagos, but that was one
The Autosport Podcast
"robin perra" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Following this one, prepare to be amazed. Colin McRae's previous record of being the youngest, world rally champion at 27, hasn't just been beaten. It just got smashed. Let's find out who just became the youngest ever champion how he ended Finland's 20 year wait for a title. And what he can do for the future of the sport. Let's get up to speed with autosports, Tom Howard Tom. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having us. Back on the show. So you just witnessed history being made in New Zealand with the youngest ever champion. The world rally championship. Let's remind ourselves, though, who the previous youngest champion was, tell us more. The legend that is all that was sadly Colin mccrea, certainly for me, he was a hero of mine growing up one of the reasons why I even got hooked into watching rallying and I'm sure there's several people of similar age to myself and an older and younger that would have also enjoyed watching Colin McRae. He was a real special talent on the his only world title in 1995 and did that at the age of 27, which was the youngest at the time. 27 back there would have been seen very, very young because champions were sort of, you know, the late 20s, early 30s, and sometimes mid 30s were sort of seen as the prime age to win a world title. So yes, Conor McRae was known as the mister maxim of attack. He was a very exciting driver to watch race for Subaru, the factory team and his early 90s then went to Ford and then he had his final season with citron in 2003. He still regarded as one of the legends of the sport even today, 26 years on since his world title. And in the top level of rallying in the modern era, tell me about the recent champions. And how long they'd been driving? Were they also all older? Inverted commas. Champions. If you're not too familiar with rallying and WRC, then in the last few couple of decades, we say it's been dominated by two Sebastian's two French French rally drivers, Sebastian Loeb, and Sebastian ogier, Loeb has the 9 time world champion, the most successful and greatest rally driver of the ball. He has 80 world rally championship wins and has been competing even this year on a part time basis at the age of 48 and still winning events so Monte Carlo in January, so Sebastian ogier took over from him. One 8 titles and is the reigning world champion this year until Kelly Robin Perez success. That sort of period of dominance was split by tanak who won the world title in 2019 for Toyota. So that's how the world rally scene has played out over the last few years. While following rally New Zealand over the weekend, Callie Robin perra is now world champion. They call him king Kelly. You could also call him birthday boy. Tell us about the weekend and Callie Robin Pereira being the new world champion. What's a weekend if you or Kelly off of Paris celebrating your 22nd birthday? I don't know. He does get any better, I guess. If you're a rally driver or if you're if you're dream is to win the world rally champion, it doesn't get any better than the weekend that Callie Robin Perez just experienced not only has he become that the youngest ever world champion at the age of 22 and one day. He also became the first Finnish world champion for 20 years, so it ended that drought for a rally mad nation. So it's a massive deal for Finland. They've already announced that there's going to have a special celebration day in the country in his hometown of your vascular. So it's a big deal for Finland. And a big deal for Kelly Rothenberg. I mean, he's just a phenomenal talent. It's a record, I reckon we won't see beaten. A new benchmark, which I think is just above and beyond what anyone could have imagined. Now, he hasn't come from nowhere, like all overnight success stories. It's been 20 years in the making. Maybe 22 years in the making. Because in the beginning, there was Harry, Robin pere. Yep, Callie's father, WRC driver, 1993 to 2006. What happened with his dad's career and how did that lead into Cali getting behind the wheel? Harry Robin pere a former factory driver for Peugeot and sayat as well and it's a bushy. So he's been around a while as Harry. But I only ever won one rally back in 2001 at Sweden. So he was a regular podium finisher, but never really a title contender. He was what you'd call, I guess, a very safe pair of hands. You would have implored him to just pick up the points and be that sort of driver there, but perhaps not the one you put your money behind to lead your team to a title. He's really has some helped build obviously his son Kelly wrote from pair in terms of the rally driver. From an early age, he's got him in the car in cars driving from I think 8 or 9. He's been Cali has been driving some sort of vehicle. What do you think about it? Yes, he's the youngest of a world champion at the age of 22, but he's been driving things for a very long time. And our over that time, you just build the skills. Boy, as he built some skills because most of the paddock most of the service park sorry would envy the skills that Kali Roth and bear have his age. Certainly, you just watching him, he is he has skills beyond his years. The composure that he has behind the wheel, I don't think we have seen in many drivers in all motor sport. It's something that I generally can't really describe, but he just has this sort of, I just jump in the car and I just go and do it. There's no worries, there is no sort of panic. He's machine like, I guess. Is the only way to sort of it's just a machine. I'm generally speechless at how good he is because we're obviously fold him all season 6 rally wins. But he just has this ability to just destroy his rivals, but he's real skill. And I guess this is sort of comes back to all those years that you've been training in all sorts of cars, trying to learn car control. And it's his car control, which sets him about apart from the rest, because when the weather gets tricky, Cali rov repair is untouchable. There is no one that can come near him when it starts raining or gets slippery.
The Autosport Podcast
"robin perra" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Dedicated to rally, where we put all of our content there, and occasionally we crop up here as well in the auto sport channel. When there's a big thing to talk about, which there is today because we've sent our man Tom Howard to rally safari. It's going to be a wonderful event in Kenny around 6 of this season. The world rally championship sees a return to an event that was a regular from 1972 to 2002 back after a 19 year hiatus, though, and Tom welcome along to the podcast. If you can just tell us, you know, about your journey. Oh, we keep hearing about his travel chaos in the newspapers. And what it's like where you are and where you're working from, just set the scene for us. Firstly, we've got to say thanks for this opportunity to be able to actually go to cover an event like this. So a lot of strings have been pulled for us to be here in the first place. So those people that know who they are should receive some thanks. But firstly, yeah, it's quite a long journey. I haven't had any sleep for 24 hours. So I'm very tired, but yeah, so flew out from Heathrow to Cairo last night. And then got a plane from Cairo through the night to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. And then got another flight from Tanzania this morning to Nairobi in Kenya. So I landed in Nairobi about 8 a.m. Kenya time. So then we had a two and a half hour road trip to naivasha, which is where the rally is based. So I've seen quite a lot today. Some things I quite confronting, some things quite spectacular. But yeah, it's been a bit of a long journey, but we are here and we are here to cover safari rally. I can see you're working from some sort of, it looks like an office. I mean, you're on your own in some sort of room. What facility do they build in the middle of the desert? So we've got like we're actually in a wildlife resort near Lake naivasha, which is a holiday destination, so we say it's quite a touristy area. Lots of hotels, lots of safari trips that you can go on. So we're in a sort of a wildlife resort where they've constructed all these temporary buildings to house all the rally cars this weekend. Near the town of nova. So it's a small town, not two hours north of Nairobi. But we're in quite a extensive metal structure with a tarpaulin roof and I've cheekily nabbed the FIA office, which is a little bit quieter than the media center to be able to do this podcast. So thanks to Vera, if I media delegate. So let me borrow her office. So we should be doing this in vision because your Wi-Fi connection is rock solid. It looks great. It's nice and crisp. It's better than when you have 5 minutes down the road is who sets all this up before we actually get into talking about the rally just for our listeners who might be interested in like the infrastructure of a rally event in safari rally Kenya. Is this the FIA that build all this or WRC and the promoters? And the safari rally organizers. I think a point that we should make here is this is a really serious event here. This is the biggest sport and event they have in Kenya. It's bigger than any football event or marathon or anything else. So everything is pulled into this to make it a spectacular as possible. And I have to say, being a hugely impressed with the Internet connectivity and the service park and everything so far. I've had my own personal driver, take me around everywhere today. So called Nelson, who should get a shout out. He was a very, very nice fella. So yeah, this is a serious event. The president will be here tomorrow of Kenya to oversee it. And this is a key part of his sort of manifesto, I guess. He was a very key part of his plan to bring this event back to Kenya as it has been a way for a while, obviously came back last year. But this was all a very key part of their sort of political strategy because this is not only a sporting event. It's all about tourism. And it has such a long tradition, as you said, at the beginning there. So it's a very, very special event for Kenya. Colin McRae's last win was there. It's been won by Richard burns and Tommy McKinnon. It did come back last year, but a kind of a legendary event for those people who might not be super into their rally. What's it like for speed and the location and the kind of surfaces they'll be on. So this will be one of the toughest on the calendar and this will be even tougher than it was last year as the crews have been saying today in the press conference. But these are high speed gravel stages, very open stages. So you're out in the middle of now where really lots of wildlife so they'll be giraffes, buffalo, elephants, zebra, so the crews will come across all sorts of different animals on there and their ways through the stages, obviously they try to clear the stages before they run through to make sure it's as clear as possible, but you can't really legislate for any zebras running around at the erratic. But yes, they're very fast, open stages. And the graph is quite soft and sandy in places. So the car is actually sort of dig in quite a lot. And if you're not careful, you can actually get stuck as calorie roughen Perry did last year. So you get stuck in this sort of quicksand like gravel, which is called fresh fish. Is the local term. And so it's quite an interesting combination of you can not go flat out on this event. There are too many areas where you need to be careful and preserve the cars. It's so rough in places. So it's really going to be a case of who measures it the best in terms of going flat out when they know they can, but also making sure the car is safe and healthy. So you reach the finish. It's going to be a real rally of attrition. Yeah, organizers know what they're doing in terms of clearing the way. But how do they clear the way of the animals and to try and keep them clear of the cars? In the old days, every crew used to have its own helicopter run ahead, but they don't have like these days. So there is a helicopter that goes through and a double zero car, which goes through to make sure the stage is clear before anyone comes in. But one of the tools that some of the teams run to sort of help scare wildlife away so they don't have any trouble with they run a special flashing light system on their headlights. So they're constantly flashing, which is hopefully which hopes to catch the eye of any animal and sort of warn them that there's a car coming. So there's some little clever little tools I have, but largely speaking, there isn't a great deal you can do, but the organizers do the best I can to make sure that there is no dramas. The last rally out was a warm one, but what are the conditions going to be like for the drivers and inside the cars, these new hybrid cars? Yes, so in Sardinia, they ran some tweaked modifications to the cars to combat this increased temperatures in the cockpit. Sardinia was incredibly hard, 40°. We're not looking like we're going to exceed 25 here in Kenya. So it's going to be a lot easier, shall we say on the cruise, not no less tough, but the temperatures won't be as high. There is also a threat of rain on every day. So which could also throw a spanner in the works. So yeah, the conditions are very mixed. It's going to be a real challenge for all of them. Kelly Robin perra arrives there with a 50 point lead over Thierry Neville. Tell us about the form going into this event. So yeah, Kelly obviously had a quiet event last time in Sardinia, which was going to be a tough one for him to open the road, always going to be very difficult for him there. With the way that the roads are, so dusty and tight and compact..
The Autosport Podcast
"robin perra" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Let's review an explosive rally Croatia. It's the gravel notes podcast with Tom Howard, my name is Martin Lee, asking Tom the questions today and holy moly Robin pero wins in Croatia a year after crashing out on stage one. But that's not a simple, rally nobody could have predicted how that one went. What are your impressions? If you're a rally phone right now, you're being spoilt for choice with the drama and excitement that is happening in the championship and has been for the last 6 months or so. Yeah, both to put it mildly to events from three this year have gone to a final stage showdown and on Sunday we had a hell of a final stage showdown between and Callie Robin perea. The rally itself looked as though rob and Perry had this sewn up he'd led by more than a minute million a minute and a half on Saturday morning had a 31 second lead on Sunday morning having lost almost a minute to a puncture on Saturday, but on Sunday it all got turned on its head. Thanks to some sudden down bore shower that on the penultimate stage and Paul Kelly had the wrong ties for that. I lost his lead to oit tanak and then we had a final stage showdown. Let's review a tweet you sent on Sunday morning when Robin perra looked like it had it all under control, which said soft tyre gamble hasn't paid off for Tanaka on stage 17 Robin perra on Pirelli's extends his lead to 31.1 seconds with just three stages to go. The flying Finn will take the win unless there is a twist in the tail and you had no idea when you tweeted that, but holy moly would there be a twist in the tail. In fact, I think we did a, I think we did a Twitter poll. Sunday morning, who will win rally Croatia and this will be one that's our rally fans might have got a little bit wrong. So there we go. I'll just mention that. Tanak took 57% and Robin Perry took 43% of the fan vote of who would win. So there you go. We get it wrong, but the fans get it wrong as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, no one really could have predicted what would happen in just those final three stages. So yeah, as we said by stage 17 of 20, rather than Perez got a 31 second lead over tanak and you thinking, yep, home and dry. This is simple. But then on stage 18, tanakh gets a clause a little bit of that time back, so it's like 28 seconds the lead for Rothenberg going into the stage and then the heavens opened. Toyota didn't actually have the information that it was going to ride. They believed that it was just going to be cloudy and the Rhine wouldn't come down. Whereas Hyundai, tan X team, their weather band got its spot on. He absolutely knew it was going to rain, so they took the soft tyres rather than the hard tyres that rob perri took and the softs are much better in the wet. Talent had a huge advantage going into this absolute sopping wet stage. Where he got, he took, well, he reclaimed all of that deficit to Robin Perry and had a 1.4 second lead going into the final stage where Paul calley just looked crestfallen because he'd done everything like he dominated the rally and then just saw it all just evaporate on one stage and left him with one stage to fight back. It was just, you had to feel for him, but ultimately a wrong title was his doubtful there. But the team obviously didn't have the info. So we had this absolute grandstand finish set up where we had a final power stage, obviously live on television, so a big crowd there that in fact reports of Frederick 50,000 fans across the weekend for rally cry, so they really seemed to pack the stages. They loved it. And they got a great finish. So heading into that final stage, the bizarrely the rides were absolutely bone dry in the sun had come out after that rain on the previous stage, but there was a lot of mud on the roads which meant that Cali's tyres were not the rubber you needed for that stage and it had the advantage. So to do what Cali did, which was as he said, a full scent, which is written on his crash helmet. And he absolutely launched into this stage. I've never seen any quite like this. It was just full maximum attack full like Colin McRae style and it was just ragged, but he managed to pull the gap and win the rally by 4.3 seconds, which was just left everyone stunned. Nobody thought he could do this. And I think that this is the moment where we've realized we've got a real superstar in our hands in WRC at the moment. So after a podium ceremony and was wearing a golden tie, which you hear Tom reference in this Tom caught up with Callie afterwards, just very quickly for some initial reaction here's what he said. Congratulations.
The Autosport Podcast
"robin perra" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Really happy for them. So yeah, to do what he's doing at 21 is phenomenal. It really is. In my eyes, he will dominate the sport. He will go on to dominate the sport for a long time. There's no question about it. He has got everything in his arsenal to do that. And what I really liked about Kelly's performance in Sweden was it was extremely controlled, but also incredibly fast and took risks where he knew he could take risks. So he was a very mature drive. And also, I think it's worth highlighting that on Sunday. My respect for him goes, it goes up massively because the service part was kind of skirting around the issues that are currently going on in Ukraine, but Cali made that pretty clear. It was in his thoughts with his speech after winning the event and saying that I didn't think he could celebrate this because of what is going on there. And no one was really brave enough to sort of come out and speak about it. And he did that without being prompted. I dug out the quote. It doesn't feel great to celebrate too much. It's been a really difficult weekend for people in Ukraine, and I wish them strength and hope. It's all I can do at this moment was his quote. Now, of course, Finland's got a big land border with Russia and of course, you know, for those that know how worldwide listeners of this podcast, of course, but if you go back in history, Finland has had to defend itself from Russia in the past. But here is someone. I try and think back to when I was 21. I was no way able to make a mature statement like that. This wasn't testing like Formula One had testing. And so there's less pressure, Vettel was able to say what he had. Max Verstappen, for instance, the new world champion in Formula One. I thought a very champions response. But this was testing that they had in Barcelona last week, and there's less pressure. In a Formula One weekend, in that white heat of competition, I don't think Formula One drivers would have spoken the way they did. Maybe, I don't know, I may be doing a disservice. I don't know. But it's difficult to say isn't it? But this was in the white heat of competition. He just won. He crossed the line. There was no jumping on top of the car. This is a sport that people look up to, not just kids looking up to, but we look at our sportsmen and women to inspire us to take a lead, whether that is through their dedication to sport their what they'll do to win, but in cases like this, this is where sport is important. It's not just going racing at the weekend as a bit of entertainment. It's really important. Was that recognized when you're in Sweden, what did other people notice what you noticed was trying to ask? Absolutely, absolutely. I think when we all heard that in the media room live, everyone sort of was quite I guess in a way, kind of proud that someone had come out and just said that because I think everyone was feeling a little bit uneasy at times. And to have the sort of consciousness to do that, just after finishing. I just found that very impressive. And he is a great role model, isn't he? I mean, I have to admire it. I just have to, like, very, very, very well said. And I think it was the right thing to say. And I just think you couldn't really, it just wouldn't have felt right, celebrating normally. They had to be something, you know, some actions. And to their credit, the FIA at the podium in the city center in Maya, they actually had a what they called a moment of solidarity for Ukraine. So it was a sort of minute silence type of thing when they called rough and pirro onto the ramp to officially collect his trophy because when he said what he said, that was once he just crossed the stage finish line. It wasn't actually at the official podium, so to speak. So my admiration for calorie Robin berries is sky high at the moment, really impressed by that. And it was a very nice story in a way that he won the event that his father, Harry Robin pere had won in 2001, and that was Harry's only ever WRC victory. So a nice like father like some moment. What a talent he is. There's plenty of articles out there about famous dynasties in motor racing. Whether it's in IndyCar or Formula One or father and sons and father and daughters rallying and stuff like that. But there is a sense to him that he has grown up in racing one of those countries where people start very young, racing on frozen lakes and stuff like that. Anyone from the Nordic countries, if they're in racing, they have not only started young, but they tend to have an understanding of their position in the world. Maybe it's because you live so close to death. I don't know that they think about it a lot because you do, like you say, he's so wise beyond his years. I'm glad that was reflected. I almost feel bad not talking about Neville and lappy in second and third because I think the story of Robin perra winning needs to be told alongside the story of Evans. Tell us how his weekend spiraled out of this control. Really strong Friday, really strong Friday. And he needed to get a result after Monty, where he made, I'm characteristic error and lost the podium..