Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe

Meeke and Ostberg in three-rally fight for Citroen WRC future

Citroen drivers Kris Meeke and Mads Ostberg will have the next three rounds of the World Rally Championship to stake their claim on a DS3 WRC for next season

Citroen team principal Yves Matton says he will not make a decision on who will be in his team before the end of Rally Australia in September.

Matton told AUTOSPORT: "The plan for the first part of the year was always for Kris and Mads to learn the car and gain their experience and when we start the second half of the year, they need to start to try gain some results.

"I need to give them at least three rallies before I think about next year. They will have Finland, Germany and Australia and then I will see."

Meeke has previous experience of the next three events and says he is comfortable with the selection process.

"I'm not going to dwell on what might or might not come out of the next three rallies," said Meeke.

"I said from the start of the season that knowledge was always going to be a very big factor and I had very little knowledge of the rallies at the start of the year.

"But now it's different, we're now coming to events which I have done before and that makes such a difference."

While Matton wants to see pace from his drivers from here on in, he was quick to recognise Meeke's relative lack of experience, having started just 16 world rallies in a top-flight car.

Talking about his expectations of the Northern Irishman ahead of this weekend's Rally Finland, Matton said: "I think Kris will be able to perform well on the stages he did last year and maybe not so much on the ones he doesn't know.

"We don't ask him for the classification, but more to show what he is able to do on some of the stages."

Be part of the Autosport community

Join the conversation
Previous article Mads Ostberg beats Marcus Gronholm in Rally Finland WRC exhibition
Next article Rally Finland: Jari-Matti Latvala leads shakedown for Volkswagen

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe