14 Feb 12

Rally Sweden:
Five things we
learned

Rally Sweden brings the 'winter' season of the World Rally Championship to a close, but what are the things we learned from it? Here are the five lessons that wrc.com will be taking away.

1. Mikko Hirvonen is already up to speed with his new Citroen. The Finn said it would take him a bit of time to get used to the car, but we reckon he’s got there already. Hirvonen showed that he’s no number two to Sebastien Loeb: the multiple world champion has a fight on his hands.

2. Global warming is for real. While in Ukraine it was minus 39 degrees centigrade or so, in Sweden, it struggled to snow at all during the rally. Go figure.

3. Volkswagen will struggle to get into the top six this year. After Sebastien Ogier’s stunning performance in Monte Carlo (before crashing) some people said he could even challenge for podiums in the Volkswagen Motorsport Skoda Fabia S2000. Not a chance.

4. Qualifying works. It may sound odd to talk about qualifying in the context of the World Rally Championship. But the Qualifying Stage proved to be the perfect solution to the problem of running order - and there was no question of anyone losing time deliberately on the rally.

5. PROTON is a force to be reckoned with. The Malaysian manufacturer, which has entered the Super 2000 World Rally Championship, not only dominated Monte Carlo until an unfortunate fire, but also led in Sweden from start to finish.