Versatility is the strength of a modern-day rally driver. Just look at the world championship leader.
Takamoto Katsuta recently became the first driver since Gilles Panizzi (in 2000) to win their first two World Rally Championship events consecutively.
Panizzi went back-to-back on Tarmac – and indeed all seven of his WRC wins were on that surface. Katsuta went from the rough and tumble of Safari Rally Kenya to the Tarmac of Croatia.
There’s no room for a ‘surface specialist’ anymore.
But for the previous generation, most drivers had a preference. Petter Solberg, for example, won 12 events on gravel or snow and just one on asphalt. Four-time world champion Juha Kankkunen won 23 WRC events but none of them were on Tarmac.
Fellow Finn Marcus Grönholm had a similar ratio to Toyota’s current deputy team principal. Of his 30 victories, just one was on Tarmac – and it was Monte Carlo.
Grönholm didn't have as much success on Tarmac, but he wasn't bad on the surface
With the WRC community currently preparing for the second of two Tarmac rounds in quick succession this week, ‘Bosse’ has opened up on his Tarmac ability and experience in his column, exclusively available on Club DirtFish.
“I think the biggest difference between me and Sébastien [Loeb] was that coming up in Finland, we only have gravel rallies in the Finnish Rally Championship (FRC), but in the French Championship (FFSA) they have a mix of gravel and Tarmac events,” Grönholm said.
“That really helped him, because he had more experience on different surfaces, and he could adapt quicker than me when the conditions were always changing.”
The Finn also had some very capable team-mates on Tarmac at Peugeot, namely Gilles Panizzi and François Delecour.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said this to anyone – not publicly, anyway! – but it was like when you copy someone’s homework at school. You have the right answers, but you don’t know why you have them! That’s exactly how it was at Peugeot when I was learning from those two!” he added.
“A good example of me copying homework was that over long-runs, I didn’t know the tires and Jean-Pierre told me that. He was completely right, too. I could take the same tire as François or Gilles, but I didn’t properly understand how they would behave over a 40 or 50 kilometer stage.”
Grönholm had strong benchmarks in Panizzi and Delecour
Also discussing Tarmac mishaps and near misses, Grönholm believes he got very close to Loeb toward the end of his career. “By the time I went to Ford, I was quite confident in setting up a car for Tarmac. It was something Malcolm’s team was always very good at, too,” he said.
“There were two asphalt rallies in 2007 with the Ford Focus that really stand out for me. In Catalunya we were fighting with Sébastien for the lead, but a turbo problem on a road section lost us minute or so, and we dropped to third.
“At the next event in Corsica, we finished second, about 24-25 seconds behind him. There was nothing wrong with our speed there, he was just that little bit better at reading the road and the conditions.”
Join Club DirtFish today to read Grönholm’s full column.
