I ♥ Rally

Well it all started some 11 months ago at the principality, and now we know the winners are Sébastien Loeb and Sennamental Favourite. But unlike the actual championship, the underSteer WRC title was only decided at the last round. Coming into the final round, Gibernever (2 points off Sennamental Favourite) was trying to add to his F1 and MotoGP titles and his almost locked up V8 title. Carlotta was on outside chance too, some 22 points back. But in the end, the inaugural WRC title was taken by a mere 3 points by Sennamental Favourite.

In motor racing there can be a lot of ifs and buts, just ask Murray Walker, so I thought it might be interesting to have a look back at some defining moments of the championship. The first was Hector's favourite... Sweden... Daniel Carlsson scored an impressive podium finish after being a late starter in the rally. Like Hector, Daniel is living in the past. Have a look at his website (http://www.danielcarlsson.com/index.php?language=english) and you'll see that the Driver Standings table hasn't been updated since the Swedish event. The reason this event was key, is that a number of teams, including Sennamental Favourite "gained" 5 points in Hector's mind after results were incorrectly entered initially.

Another key race was Argentina, when Gert stated it simply: "438", some think he was talking about some score in some one day cricket game, but I reckon he was making an inspired pick on how many points WHEELY TYRED & EXHAUSTED was going to get, and Carlotta was more excited about "213", maybe some other score in some other one day cricket game, or possibly an almost inspired pick on how far from "Nirvana" (aka: 5000 in TT) she would be at the end of the year. And speaking of Carlotta, I see this Argentinian rally as the death of Carlotta's interest in rally, and her interest was only born a few rounds earlier after taking the championship lead. You see, I pointed out something that destroyed Carlotta. It happened thanks to Luis Pérez Companc stalling at the start of the final stage and Henning Solberg stopping on the final stage. These two minor changes to the results meant Carlotta lost 10 points, Sennamental Favourite gained 8 points and Gibernever made out like a bandit by gaining 29 points. Had these two minor problems not occured on an relatively simple special stage of the rally, Carlotta and Sennamental Favourite would have shared the title on 585 points and Gibernever would have only been on 561 points.

Now the above two rallies were great for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most important rally was New Zealand. Sennamental Favourite was in third, 12 points behind Gibernever in first and 7 points behind Carlotta in second. Rossi had been confirmed as the bonus driver, and it was always going to be a gamble to put him in the top eight. You would basically be relying on dnf's from others. Out of the three in the title chase only Sennamental Favourite put Rossi in the top 8 and got all 20 points for him, thus becoming the punter to get most points for picking Rossi across both categories. The Crome Arrow (who may have had some local knowledge) was the only other punter to put Rossi in the top 8 and also got all 20 points. This meant that going into the last rally Sennamental Favourite held the upper hand.

To the final race and at different times during the weekend it looked like Sennamental Favourite was in the best position, while at other times it looked like Gibernever was going to sneak past. Once Hirvonen went out, Sennamental Favourite's position looked strong as long as Pons could stay ahead of Atkinson. That happened by a mere 7.6 seconds. So at the end of a fantastic season of no blinking from Grönholm, Sennamental Favourite yelling at Grönholm (at Indy) and him still not blinking - AMAZING, Loeb winning the title in EatMyShorts style (sitting at home and doing nothing), Gladious telling us how much he loves Rally (while bringing us up to date with the goings-on in Rugby League, Cricket, Boxing, etc), Hector losing the plot, and Joe visiting the brook, we have made it to the end. Collective sigh.... phew....

So finally, to answer some questions Hector posed back in Sweden... The count of comments on Carlotta's phallus got to 6 (in WRC comments), but there were a lot more that were related but not directly referring to it. And the count of Sennamental Favourite talking about Solberg and Bobsleds got to 2.... pretty weak really. Before I go, Carlotta, how many is Magilla up to?

Oh, I almost forgot. Congratulations to the winning-est punter, The 5 Dollor Club, with 4 wins including 3 back-to-back wins in Japan, Cyprus and Turkey. Also, thanks to everyone who competed and don't forget to join up again for the first rally next year, starting January 19.