Shunts on the stages and behind the scenes

It rained. Then it rained some more. Then it really started. The road disappeared. The river appeared.

Kris Meeke tapped his phone and filled the screen with what appeared to be a scene from Armageddon.

"This is the one," he says. "It gets worse."

It couldn't.

It could.

We were watching the onboard from his recce for last week's Rally of Portugal. The Almodovar stage. It was insane. It was a boat race.

It did get worse. Think back to your news channel of choice earlier this year, showing fields full of water. Now picture an all-white recce car splashing its way through that field. Except splashing doesn't quite cover it.

It's hard to make pacenotes in this weather

You simply couldn't see the road. The rain water had filled the ditches either side of the road, the tide had come in and Meeke was driving into an ocean.

"We couldn't see any of the cuts," he observes.

Cuts?

Cuts in the corners hadn't even come into my head. It was the complete absence of curves, cambers and the corners themselves that concerned me more. Prior to seeing this, I'd blithely sat at my laptop and tapped on about how terrible the weather had been and how miserable it had made the recce. The picnic tables stayed in the back of the van on this one.

Meeke's movie was a sobering sight.

You think this is the groundwork for a couple of excuse-laden pars on Meeke's latest shunt, don't you?

You're wrong. I'm not about to make excuses for him. There is no excuse. He crashed when he shouldn't have crashed. Not good enough. And those aren't my words. They're his.

Meeke is the first to put his hand up when he's dropped the ball. He did it in Finland last year. And in Oz. Mexico and now Portugal.

Meeke was furious with himself for crashing again © McKlein

The time's come for those hands to stay by his side. And nobody knows that better than the man himself. His appraisal of his round-four retirement was toe-curlingly honest.

Talking to him for the first time post-shunt, I feared asking him what Citroen team principal Yves Matton's reaction had been. But, such was the strength of Meeke's metaphorical self-flagellation, it became clear Matton couldn't have depressed him any deeper.

Fortunately, sportsmen and women at this level don't stay down for long. Self-belief turns to self-preservation and their psyche turns to the next opportunity for greatness.

For Meeke, that's South America next month. But forget greatness. We'll settle for a finish.

The same goes for Robert Kubica. The former Formula 1 star is in a world of pain right now. Except he's not. It's a horrible fact - as he pointed out in Portugal last week - that he knows what a true world of pain is. This is a blip. He too, will be back.

Elfyn Evans is back already.

Friday's big-time roller was one of the weekend stars. And much of the credit for that has to go to Malcolm Wilson.

Evans got M-Sport's support after his big shunt © McKlein

Portugal last week was a real opportunity to see psychology at work. Left, right and centre, arms were being extended and folded around the likes of Meeke, Kubica, Evans and Ott Tanak. And Evans offered absolute proof of how well positivity worked.

Once he knew he would be out again on Saturday, Wilson pretty much laughed off Evans's second shunt in three rallies. And that was exactly the right thing to do. Bawling him out would probably have had his car binned before lunchtime on Saturday.

Instead, he put the Welshman back on the horse and gave it a kick; Wilson wanted him to go faster and smile wider. And that's just what Evans did. He pushed it, got away with it and came out having learned more than ever before. So he didn't finish in the top 10. Big deal. He rattled the Ford Fiesta RS WRC around on the limit for longer than ever before. And he loved it.

In the words of men far more famous than me: you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs - David Lapworth (we can't credit Lappy with the origination of this proverb, but it was a favourite of his when describing the panel-bending tendencies of a young up and comer). And the other: you can slow a fast driver down, but you can't speed a slow driver up. Provenance escapes me, but Peter Ashcroft comes to mind.

Both are absolutely, totally true. And it's refreshing beyond belief that the boys are being backed right now. But, as they are painfully aware, that backing won't last forever.

And, there's no doubt that the attention of the team principals was conveniently diverted by an insane situation that left the drivers ignoring the WRC television journalists on Saturday morning. The row that has bubbled under since October last year (think back to Jost Capito walking out of a meeting that had been scheduled for six months, but wasn't attended by the sport's promoter because it was a German national holiday...) exploded in Faro on Friday night.

The teams had been told they wouldn't be getting any video clips for their end-of-day promotional material. And, so the story goes, the promoter was unavailable again. At dinner.

The series promoter and its teams have been at loggerheads © McKlein

The teams met late into the night. A plan was formulated. The plan would hit the promoter where it hurt - its live television stage. The drivers kept schtum.

And here's the really sad bit: the drivers kept quiet about what was one of the most scintillating mornings in the world championship for years. Remember Saturday morning? Mikko Hirvonen was out front. Sebastien Ogier started the day third. Third. In terms of his own extraordinary brilliance, Ogier was as good as on the ropes. Hirvonen had landed one. Rattled him.

And now nothing. Not a word as the brawlers stepped in for round two. And that's not good enough.

The teams lost out on Friday and the promoter lost out on Saturday. But it was the fans - the ones who really matter - who lost out both occasions.

It's for that reason that this has to stop. The reasons for the Portuguese debacle are secondary. It should never have come to this. Laundry - especially laundry on a global scale - needs to be done in private. Always.

Am I as guilty as anybody for covering the crisis, giving it air time? No doubt there are those who think so. Fair enough. They're the ones who don't know news. And I'd like to point them in the direction of another metaphor, the one including messengers and guns.

Be under no illusion: the teams and the promoter are as far apart as they ever have been right now. A sticking plaster has been applied to a widening wound. But the good thing is that a trip to the doctors is planned.

Privately, there's an admission that failure to come out of the pre-Argentina meeting without tacit agreement on the ultimate destination of the WRC and the financing of the trip could do serious, serious harm to the sport.

Any attempt to downplay the weeks ahead is folly.