2005 WRC Begins
 

Just a reminder that the 2005 WRC season starts this weekend. Speed will be showing the recap from Monte Carlo on Sunday at 11 PM. Here’s hoping that last years “building” season for Mitsubishi pays off.

Best wishes,
f86sabre

Yeah
 

it would be nice to see the Evolution more involved!

Yeah I sure hope so.

I stopped watching the damn thing when mitsu dropped off.

WADAD

Yeah, whats the deal, sorry, but I don't follow WRC. I'm thinking I should because It looks freaking awsome. I heard that Mitsu dropped the EVO. Is that true?

You're correct, it is freaking awsome. : ) Point-to-point racing at crazy speeds on mostly gravel. Monte Carlo has snow and ice some years, Sweden is snow and ice, and Spain and Germany are tarmac rallies. I didn't get to see Japan last year but heard it's tarmac, mud, muddy tarmac and muddy gravely type mud usually.

Mitsu only ran a partial season last year in order to do more development on the car, but they're supposed to be back for a full season this year. I guess we'll see if we sit in 6th place every race, or if the Mitsu WRC 05 is "A Contender".

2005 Monte Carlo WRC
 

Mitsubishi does appear to have dropped the "Evolution" badging for the WRC car, in favor of "Lancer", but the WRC Lancer bears little (no) resemblance to the production Lancer. As of today in Monaco, Panizzi has taken 5th place in the shake down stage for the event, only a few seconds adrift of the leaders. Seems like an improvement over last year's performance level.

Anyone have links to the car mitsu is going to run for the season

Mitsubishi Motorsports
 

hkfeet, the website for the WRC effort:

MM WRC
http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/mot.../mc/index.html

2005 WRC Car:
http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/mot...car/index.html

Thanks! Go Panizzi !!!!!!!!!

I wish SPEED would not run some damned circle track race and carry live coverage of the WRC events... speedvision would have. Ok, if there's a F1 GP going on, then I guess I'll jsut watch the WRC recap at 11.

Anyone got a schedule for this year? I'm too lazy to look {thumbup}

I’m pretty sure that Rovanperä will out shine Panizzi over the course of the season. It will be fun to see. The car obviously more resembles an Evo than a standard Lancer, but I believe they get more world wide marketing mileage out of pushing the Lancer name. It should be obvious that most of the cars running the WRC do not come from the factory as performance machines (Evo/Lancer and STi not withstanding). I drove a Citroen Czara last spring while in France and it was a P.O.S. The Ford Focus and Puma are much nicer cars.

Best wishes,
f86sabre

If you've ever been to a rally it would be very difficult to run it on live television except for possibly the occasional special spectator event at the start of a rally.

The logistics of placing cameras on stages and the timing inbetween stages would create lots of down time and you wouldn't get to see the top contenders very much.

Believe me the highlights are a lot better than live rallying.

Latest Update after stage 3 - 7th place for Panizzi and 11th for Rovanpera. Panizzi was having probs with his semi-auto shifter and had to use the manual for most of the time. But still, in stage three, he managed 4th fastest time, even with the probs. Stage 4 starts now, it's a re-run of stage 3 and im hoping for another top-5 time.

i am so fired up about this. i think it will be a great year for everyone, hopefully including mitsu. ^ at least panizzi has the semi auto shifter now.

I'm looking forward to watching this rally on Sunday!