Yesterday, Henning Solberg won the battle for fourth place in Rally Ireland over Chris Atkinson. Henning himself seems to believe that he knocked Chris mentally before the stage got going. In the Eurosport coverage you saw a shining Henning say that he stopped in front of Chris on his way out of service, to show him the slicks he had put on his car – while Atko had the Pirelli winter tyres.

Of course this may have worried Chris – we will never know that, but I doubt so. Norweigan youngster Andreas Mikkelsen and his co-driver Ola Floene drove as gravel crew for Henning and recommended him to go for the tarmac tyre, since only the first three km’s of the stage were muddy and wet. From what I know Atko went off almost immediately, so probably he hadn’t had very much time to worry about his wrong tyre choice – and Henning’s talk seems to be more of a funny thing and a PR trick than the actual reason he won the fight. Probably Atkinson would have gone off anyway, since he seems to have problems keeping off the throttle in tight battles. If he wouldn’t – there’s a good chance Henning would have won anyway because of the better tyre choice.

No matter what, such small stories where tyre choices and strategy seems to be crucial is good to the sport – and I’ve went from being a supporter of the control tyre to missing the unpredictability of different tyre brands. Those strategy stories are just lovely and I hope to see more them – they’re just one of those things that makes rallying fun!