Northern Irish Citroën Racing World Rally Championship driver Kris Meeke just crushed Rally Finland with the fastest ever win there. So, imagine his annoyance when Volkswagen team principal/whiner-in-chief Jost Capito says that Meeke can’t be happy with that win. Dude, what?
Capito’s Volkswagen team includes perpetual front-runner Sébastien Ogier, a driver so dominant that our Kinja-kin over at The Rally Takeover now offer a “NOgier Cup” in their Fantasy WRC game for rally fans who are tired of seeing Ogier win.
As the leading driver in the series championship, Ogier must run stages first on the first two days of every WRC rally. It’s a mildly controversial rule that the WRC uses to even out the field somewhat. The first car out on each stage encounters dustier roads with less grip.
Now, I’m all for sticking up against series rules you disagree with, but when you bring other competitors into it—man, that’s not cool. Because Meeke isn’t running a full-time WRC schedule, he gets to start the rallies he does participate in this year further back in the pack, where he can go forth and dominate on grippier stage roads.
So, Capito put some rather interesting words in Meeke’s mouth after Rally Finland when he summed up his annoyance with the situation to Autosport:
Kris can’t be happy with this win.
If it’s predictable [conditions] and he doesn’t do a major mistake, what is the value of this win?
This is why he was pissed off that I said there was no chance for anybody else to win.
It devalues it - it does, it’s a fact. Kris could only lose in Finland.
If he didn’t win, if he finished second, he would be a complete idiot.
This isn’t the first time Capito has had some verbal diarrhea towards Meeke and other competitors on other teams over the WRC’s Ogier-as-street-sweeper rule. Earlier this season, he claimed to Autosport that non-full-season participants like Meeke and Sébastien Loeb devalue the championship by showing up to a few rallies, starting behind Ogier and the other championship front-runners, and winning rallies (instead of Ogier).
Capito saying that Meeke can’t savor his total domination of Rally Finland because of a rule that mostly affects Capito’s star driver is ridiculous at best. Meeke’s response to that is the epitome of a good tweet:
Good ol’ Steve McQueen flipping the British Isles’ version of the bird says it all.
Please, refer to the flowchart, as I believe someone just got told.