Speed quest

There are exciting goings-on in the WRC world. After 3 seasons of tremendous predicitability with Sebastian Loeb dominating, this season has been close and is going to come down to another last race fight. Gronholm takes a 4 point lead over Loeb into the last 2 rounds of the WRC.

Incidentally, Loeb had a chance to put a big one over Gronholm in Japan this weekend. But as luck would have it - they both ended up in the ditch. First Gronholm went off on Friday, badly damaging his front suspension, I think. And then a pace note error by Loeb's co-driver (he read out plus-plus rather than minus-minus for a turn) meant that Loeb went into a corner too fast and dumped his car into a ditch as well. He was in 2nd place, 10 seconds behind the leader at that point.

Unfortunately, the nature of a WRC rally is that we can only ever get to watch the highlights a week later, although I think someone puts up daily highlights - not that I'm going to be able to access it in this part of the world...

Incidentally, the third official FIA championship will also see a change this year. Andy Priaulx's run of 4 (?) championships in a row in the World Touring Car Championship looks set to come to end - he's currently in 4th place and unlikely to go all the way...

What a great year for motorsports, although the MotoGP wasn't exactly a close call. Rossi desperately needs a better machine next year - c'mon Yamaha...