Tuesday | 15 Sep 2015

Australia podium just what I needed - Meeke

Kris Meeke believes his podium finish at Coates Hire Rally Australia was the best result possible against the all-conquering Volkswagen team - and he hopes it will be enough to guarantee his WRC future.

Meeke was the only driver to split the Volkswagens Down Under, taking Citroën's DS 3 to third place behind Sébastien Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala but ahead of Andreas Mikkelsen. 

"It was a good, strong weekend," Meeke told wrc.com. "A consistent rally is what I needed and in that respect I’ve had close to the perfect weekend.

"We led the rally for nearly two days but in the end I just couldn't make the most of our road position on day one and the [VW] guys were able to make up the difference on Sunday. We always knew they'd come back very strong. I really couldn't have done much more."

In hindsight Meeke felt he was wrong to gamble on soft compound tyres on day two, but he didn't think the overall outcome would have been any different.

"Okay, the tyre call on Saturday morning maybe wasn't perfect, but it wasn't a disaster either. But even with that, the pace the VW guys had on Sunday was on a different level - that's when the true pace was in evidence. For now this result as much as we can hope for," he said.

Australia was last of three rallies that Citroën will use to evaluate its drivers before deciding the 2016 line-up. And after disappointing runs in Finland and Germany, a trouble-free event with rally leading pace was just what he wanted to achieve.

"In that respect it's job done, but I don't how important the result will be. You'll have to ask my boss, or some other boss to see if I have potential," he said. "We'll see. There have been no discussions on the contract yet. For now we just have to continue to work hard."

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