I still ♥ Rally

Rally is over for two double-o seven, and that also brings a close to underSteer for another year. Once again the WRC winners are Seb and SmF and once again it all started early in the year in Monaco. Only 7 hard core punters turned up for the start, but by the end there were 16 competing for the ultimate title. Coming into the last event, it looked like Sennamental Favourite had it won, but 99.94 had a very good round to close the gap and had he had Wilson somewhere in those picks, he may have won the whole thing. The rally itself was fairly pedestrian, from what I can tell, either that, or Jari-Matti's podium in Ireland has given him another cylinder, because after the first leg when he had a problem, he was almost unbeatable in the second and third leg. Only Marcus Grönholm's win at the Cardiff Super Special Stage stopped him clean-sweeping the weekend's stages. Seb was never going to risk much, but it seemed like the other top guns must have been cruising, but don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Jari-Matti fan. I think he'll beat Mikko to become the next Finnish World Champion. In the underSteer race, cos racing took his third win of the season here and did it in style with a huge 62 points. That is the second time he has got 62 points (Argentina was the other), and both times he did it without the help of bonus points. Impressive tipping, I must say. The only other punter to break the 60 point barrier this year was Fine Cotton with 62 points in Spain, but he got 10 bonus points. So the big round specialist, cos racing, looks like a likely challenger for the rally title next year if he joins at the start of the season, because this year he started after 4 rounds and gave Sennamental Favourite a 44 point head start.

In upcoming rally news, the FIA have announced this week that as of 2009 they will start a rotational series calendar with just 12 rallies per year. Ireland has been named as the place to share the opening round with Monaco. Australia is also in for an event in 2009. Now, Daryl and I made it out to Mullaghmore for the final stage of the Irish Rally a couple of weeks ago and Daryl had his ski jacket and ski gloves on and was still cold. I had four layers... my Talmasci shirt, my Rossi jumper, another jumper, and a jacket and I was still feeling it... though I didn't have any gloves, and that was a bad decision. But, if it's that bad at the end of autumn, what the hell is it going to be like out there in January? Still, I'll be there if I'm here. And on Rally Ireland, how great was it that Gareth MacHale came home in 8th... I was so happy for Gareth, he really deserved it, he's been working long and hard for that sort of result, and it's just what the lad needed. And I'm sure noone would begrudge him that result.

As I mentioned above, this round closed the underSteer TT battle and I would like to congratulate 99.94 for winning TT by an impressive 103 points. He scored 5311 points, to Fine Cotton's 5208 and Sennamental Favourite rounded out the podium with 5201 points. The battle for fourth was very tight, but in the end TEAM K took it with 4840 points over The Doctor with 4834 and cos racing with 4832. Full updates of the TT battle will be in another review report, probably under F1, but finally here's the top tipsters for each driver:

Atkinson: The X Factor (like two peas in a pod)
Carlsson/Duval (when Duval was in the OMV Citroën): Sennamental Favourite
Galli: Sennamental Favourite
Gardemeister: Wham!
Grönholm: Fine Cotton (I suppose it's because they blink in sync)
Hänninen: Wham! with 0 points, so he picked him but got no divvies
Hirvonen: Sennamental Favourite
Kopecký: Fine Cotton and Wham! - 0 points - another pick with no divvies
Latvala: TEAM K
Loeb: 99.94 (no surprise there... that's 99.94's bread and butter, picking up the easy points)
MacHale,G: Sennamental Favourite (kind of like Rossi in Rally NZ, 2006)
Pérez Companc: The Jackal
Pons: Maverick (Maverick uses the Fine Cotton method but instead of blinking, he drives like Pons)
Raies / Villagra: The Jackal and Wham! - 0 points, another pick with no divvies
Solberg,H: TEAM K (what can I say about that......)
Solberg,P: The Doctor (the two suby boys)
Sordo: Wham!
Stohl: Wham!
Wilson: Jailgrog

So there you have it, there should be a full review under the F1 area of this site in the weeks to come, and you'll be able to join up for next year once the new year rolls around, with the tipping getting underway in late January for the Monaco Rally. Seasons Greetings and Happy New Year to all.