Are you serious?
When WRC Promoter men Mark Wilford and Jared Grellet put the plan to me, I don’t remember them mentioning an afternoon fretting over Stig Blomqvist or Ari Vatanen. How on earth can you split those two absolute legends of rallying? And heroes of my bedroom wall.
Not, I hasten to add, my bedroom wall these days. I was talking about my younger days. Choosing Stig over Ari is sacrilege. Ari over Stig? Heresy.
Why on earth did I ever sign up for this? Actually, it’s a real privilege to be included in what’s going to be one of the most talked about WRC competitions in years and I’m absolutely as eager as the rest of you find out who’s going to be crowned in just over a month. There’s a lot of talking, debating and arguing to be done on the coming weeks.
In fact, in an effort to help, I might open this one up to a Spinning The Line podcast and get the input from my DirtFish colleagues George Donaldson, Lisa O’Sullivan and Colin Clark. A problem shared is a problem halved. And podcasting decisions likely leaves the blame quartered.
But that qualifying round really does present some absolute nightmares. Petter Solberg up against Jari-Matti Latvala. Both are the loveliest of blokes and genuine buddies of mine, but it’s got to be Solberg, hasn’t it? Tell you what, I’m going to ask J-ML what he’d do. If ever there’s somebody who’ll give you an honest answer it’s Jari-Matti. Let’s test that theory in this most extreme of circumstances!
Ott Tänak against Markku Alén is another tricky one. I rate Tänak as a contender for a lot more titles, but Alén was and is one of my absolute pukka rally heroes. Skiving off school to watch him in a Martini-liveried Lancia Delta 4S is one of my formative rally memories. The bloke’s a God. How can he possibly face a qualifying round defeat?
Stiggy and AV, been there already and I can’t start to think about that dilemma again.
So let’s go instead to Richard Burns or Timo Salonen. They were, I guess, similar in their methodical, but devilishly fast approach. But Timo worse glasses and smoked more fags than Burnsie. And RB got me into Daft Punk and Diesel Jeans, when they were the right things to have in your ears and around your waist.
Definitely Richard. But then again Timo was the lookalike accountant who slayed Group B cars.
Tell you what, I’ll sleep on it.
