Posts Tagged ‘monster’

PG Andersson, Gigi Galli and Henning Solberg in the 2010 World Rally Championship?

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Reading Autosport’s article of yesterday regarding the manufacturer teams in the 2010 WRC, you can read a number of names that Autosport says “are expected” for the championship. No name is a complete surprise – but it would be interesting to know how good coverage David Evans has for them. He use to know good, but in this case it sounds a lot like speculation on some of the names.

First off, the safe names are Federico Villagra in Munchis WRT, Ken Block in Monster WRT, Petter Solberg in Solberg PSWRT – and the almost safe (?) Matthew Wilson in Stobart WRT. So far no problem. But then comes Henning Solberg as expected in Stobart – and that’s a little bit more uncertain. I know that Henning targets a seat in the WRC again, but I also know that this very much depends on a renewed contract with Expert for 2010. The second questionmark is Gigi Galli and PG Andersson – where one of them or even both are said to be joining the PSWRT. I know nothing about Galli, but when it comes to PG I know he was in discussions regarding the PSWRT early this autumn – but then he has announced that he probably can’t collect the money needed. I’ll get back with a small post on PG’s future later today.

So, it would be really intersting to know what facts are behind the article. If Evans get three right out of three on the uncertain things, it would be like heaven to any rally addict. I guess the future will show…

The truth about the Suzuki rumours – no comeback in sight

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

One week ago I wrote about the potential Suzuki comeback rumoured in an Estonian newspaper and quoting former Suzuki driver Urmo Aava. The information sounded trustworthy and it was well in line with what I had previously heard, but now I know better. The rumours are mostly bullshit, the quotes are quite far from correct and a Suzuki comeback seems to be quite far away. My source is close to Urmo Aava and has a very big hand in his WRC bid, so this time information should be right, I’m afraid…

Last weeks rumour comes from the Estonian newspaper Postimees, and is written by a guy called Peep Pahv. Pahv called Urmo asking questions about the matter, and Urmo told he had no comments. Pahv chose to interpret that as if he was right in whatever information/ideas he had about a Suzuki comeback – and wrote the article. So, basically Urmo said nothing but Pahv still rendered a big article on the Suzuki comeback.

Quite opposite to the comeback rumours – Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima has brought Suzuki to court after a conflict starting with Tajima’s retirement from the Suzuki WRT top position last year and the retirement of the team. My contact, who has very good insight into the WRC scene, believes that Suzuki is very tired of rallying after all problems related to the WRC assault, and that a comeback to rallying is really far away.

So, I guess the conclusion is that we shall forget about the Suzuki rumours and go back into the position we were two weeks ago, when a Suzuki comeback was still quite far away. Not very good news to the WRC, I’m afraid.