Words are important. When it comes to pacenotes, words are everything. That’s why Gus Greensmith has introduced some new ones to his system for this season.
The Englishman starts his WRC2 season in Kenya this week and he does so with a desire stronger than ever to be crowned a world champion at the end of the season. To help achieve that aim, to lift that title, he’s set himself one aim: get rid of the mistakes.
“The competition [in WRC2] is going to be just as high or maybe even higher this year,” Greensmith told DirtFish. “It’s going to be so important to get rid of those small mistakes which over a whole rally they count up to be seconds, so it’s about focusing on minimising small time losses.
“To help with this I’ve got new pacenotes, well not entirely [new], but new words in the notes to help remind me of those things. It seems that already we’ve found a decent step in performance, so that’s been helpful. It’s just a reminder for some of the corners where I would have a bad driving trait which could sometimes, nine times out of ten, be fine, but the one time would lose me a lot of time.
Greensmith's WRC2 campaign begins with this week's Safari Rally Kenya
“Look at last year, the only bad rally we had was Central Europe. Croatia was punctures and Finland, yes, we touched the road and it tipped us over – it’s about getting rid of those. Realistically, to win the championship, you can have one bad rally and that’s it. You can’t have a another.”
In terms of the competition for the title, defending champion Andreas Mikkelsen’s departure might have made things more straightforward. Not according to Škoda man Greensmith.
“Yeah,” he said, “we’ve lost Andreas, but we’ve gained Pierre-Louis [Loubet]. So it’s still going to be the same level of competition. I think the names that are going to be fighting for the championship are still the same. The one variable we haven’t really seen yet until we get on to a more of a consistent group of rallies is the Toyota, so that could catch some surprises. It looks strong on slower stages, so yeah, once they figure out an engine then, it’s going to be very quick.”
Beyond Kenya, Greensmith has confirmed his entry for the next WRC round in Croatia. He’ll be looking to erase the memory of stopping to change the second-stage puncture (and the subsequent flat later in the event) on the Zagreb-based rally.
