A Twitter exchange today had me pondering the topic of the relative merits of the drivers at the top of the sport. How we, and most importantly, the team managers, determine the worthiness of the individuals contesting the championship.
The conversation began in reaction to a radio discussion featuring among others, Voice of Rally Colin Clark. Colin's personal preference for the Hyundai team for 2015 was for Thierry Neuville as lead driver, with Hayden Paddon as second driver and Dani Sordo doing selected events in the Motorsport N entry (as driven by Paddon on four events this year).
A well-known Twitter user had quoted Voice of Rally on the Hyundai team order preference, as you do, and it was interesting to consider that line-up as a possible scenario for the new season instead of other personnel choices.
Another Twitter contributor considered that Dani had been 'demoted' in that scenario and only because the Brits discussing it were biased against Sordo because he's Spanish. That seemed to me to be a surprising observation, one which had never occurred to me prior to the comment being tweeted.
So, is it true? Frankly I don't know how you'd ever scientifically determine that either way but from personal experience, as a kind of Brit, I have great respect for Dani Sordo, ex WRC world champ Carlos Sainz and MotoGP's Lorenzo, Marquez and Pedrosa to name a few.
I feel that the comment of bias is probably a convenient way to pigeonhole those whose sentiment towards Dani doesn't match his own positivity about the Spaniard's value in the WRC at present. And as we're all aware, a driver's performance is subject to ups and downs over his or her career, and fluctuations even within a single season. So the value placed on that driver can be as much a perception thing as something tangible.
Dani, as an example, has scored 18 and 12 points in the two tarmac rallies that he has contested for Hyundai this season. Unsurprisingly, he will again drive for Hyundai on the Spanish round of the championship, again, a mostly tarmac event where his perceived strengths lie. We can probably assume that the Hyundai team see it that way.
But is that really the best way to evaluate the potential of the current crop of drivers? We've seen very clearly that a driver who has been framed as a gravel specialist has reinvented himself as a tarmac and gravel expert in less than a single season. Jari-Matti latvala is arguably the fastest tarmac driver in the world right now, and I can't think of anyone who can be justifiably considered a faster gravel driver either.
A year ago that simply didn't seem possible.
Which brings us back to the tweet which sparked this blog post. Why would Colin Clark express his desire that Hayden Paddon, a rookie at this level and somebody who has had just four events with secondary Hyundai 'Motorsport N' team, take the number two car in the main team for 2015? Clark is the best person to answer that, but he's not alone in that sentiment.
On his first event of the season in the i20 WRC in Sardegna, Paddon bled 4.4 seconds per kilometre to the winner Sebastien Ogier. Now 4.4 seconds over a kilometre doesn't sound like a lot, especially at the sort of pace that we mere mortals drive, but over a couple of hundred kms of a rally, it's massive.
But on his most recent event, the difference between the per-km time of the winner (again Sebastien Ogier), and the Kiwi rookie, had diminished to just 0.67 seconds per km. That happened over just four events, an astonishing improvement. One can but imagine where Paddon would be now had he driven all the events that Ogier has this year.
From that perspective, Colin Clark's Hyundai preference seems less about bias and more about developing the potential that is evident already in the New Zealander, despite his lack of top-line experience and the limited number of events he has had this season.
Haydon Paddon is an unassuming but utterly single-minded young man with enormous potential. Don't be surprised to see him crowned WRC Champion before too long.
[Update] Haydon Paddon today confirmed that he will be in the WRC in 2015. No further details are available as I write this, but his fans will be relieved and delighted by the news. Now, who for, and which rounds? Enquiring minds...
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