Why We Lost
Malcolm Wilson, M-Sport director of BP Ford Abu Dhabi rally team: “I think Mikko lost the championship on stage 8 and 9, not on the final day when the bonnet flew up. It was psychological rather than mechanical problem. We would have been happy if we could have found some mechanical problem, it would have made things easier for everybody in the team to accept, Mikko and ourselves included. but there was nothing mechanically wrong. Mikko knows it. We had the driveshaft troubles on the Friday but we made no changes for the rest of the rally. The driveshafts themselves were fine, the trouble was that the boot around the joint breaking. I believe that after all this Mikko will come back even stronger next year, if you look at how he has progressed over the years. It has always been disappointments like this that has made him even stronger. The performances of Sebastien Loeb and Mikko on this rally were in a different class to everybody else. In stages 8 and I think Sebastien used all the skills in his book gained from his five previous championship titles and his fifty odd rally wins to best use and made best used of them on those stages. I think it was the Loeb factor that ended up costing us the rally and the title for Mikko”.

New Star is Born in Britain
21 year old Eyvind Brynildsen’s domination of the Group N category of Rally GB, which he held from stage three to the finish was a remarkable achievement. "This was the second time I have done this event. Last year we retired shortly after the start, and I have never had the chance to rally on the stages which we used this year". The Belgian based Rene Georges team only started to run Skoda cars in mid season after several years actively running VW Polo Super 2000s. He began regular world championship competition in 2008 when he entered the PCWRC at the wheel of Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX and had a very troubled season. For 2009 he started the season again in Evo IX cars but this time run by the Ralliart New Zealand team and immediately finished second PCWRC finisher on the first event of the season. When it became apparent that the future lay with Super 2000 cars he left the Ralliart NZ team in the autumn season and started rallying a Skoda. "I love the Skoda, it is easy to drive fast and it is difficult to drive slowly. It was a big smile when we arrived at the finish, and to realise that we finished third in the PCWRC with present or past rally world champions all around me", Next year he hopes to contest the FIA’s World Cup for Super 2000 car but added "the only problem is that the budget for running Super 2000 cars is a lot higher than running normal Group N cars, but we are trying hard to do it".

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