Meeke and Ostberg in three-rally fight for Citroen WRC future
Citroen drivers Kris Meeke and Mads Ostberg will have the next three rounds of the World Rally Championship to stake their claim on a DS3 WRC for next season
Citroen team principal Yves Matton says he will not make a decision on who will be in his team before the end of Rally Australia in September.
Matton told AUTOSPORT: "The plan for the first part of the year was always for Kris and Mads to learn the car and gain their experience and when we start the second half of the year, they need to start to try gain some results.
"I need to give them at least three rallies before I think about next year. They will have Finland, Germany and Australia and then I will see."
Meeke has previous experience of the next three events and says he is comfortable with the selection process.
"I'm not going to dwell on what might or might not come out of the next three rallies," said Meeke.
"I said from the start of the season that knowledge was always going to be a very big factor and I had very little knowledge of the rallies at the start of the year.
"But now it's different, we're now coming to events which I have done before and that makes such a difference."
While Matton wants to see pace from his drivers from here on in, he was quick to recognise Meeke's relative lack of experience, having started just 16 world rallies in a top-flight car.
Talking about his expectations of the Northern Irishman ahead of this weekend's Rally Finland, Matton said: "I think Kris will be able to perform well on the stages he did last year and maybe not so much on the ones he doesn't know.
"We don't ask him for the classification, but more to show what he is able to do on some of the stages."
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments