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A season of under achievements for all Peugeot drivers!
Peugeot called off their Rovanperä deal published in August
In August, Peugeot works team made public who would be their drivers of
season 2004. Marcus Grönholm and Harri Rovanperä were announced to
participate in all the rounds of FIA World Championship rallies of season
2004. In mid-November, the team informed Rovanperä that his services
no longer would be needed in 2004. This means that Peugeot want to
annul the contract they released with wide publicity in August 2003. 
A season of under achievements for all Peugeot drivers
Peugeot wasn’t able to take the Constructors’ title 2003 that it was
thirsting for. At the connection of the recent driver speculations in the
media, there have been attemps to explain the team´s defeat by
Rovanperä´s lack of success at the end of the season. However,
Rovanperä having attended only three of the seven rounds of the latter
season, it would be wise for journalists to take a closer look also at
the other Peugeot drivers’ performances rather than blame one driver of
the failure of the entire team. The technical problems the cars have
suffered have also had an undeniable effect on the outcome of the
season. One can also make the conclusion, when regarding the results,
that the 206 WRC had left far behind its challengers, at least when it
comes to the latter part of the year, especially in rallies run on gravel.
Marcus Grönholm had a good start for his season, and took his third
victory of the year in Rally Argentina in May. After that, he took the start in all
nine WRC events, but was unsuccessful in his attempt of scoring points
in any of the five rallies on gravel. In the four asphalt events that were
competed after Argentina, instead, Grönholm managed in finishing in
points three times. In addition to the second place that he took in the
German round of world championship, Grönholm finished fourth in Italy
and sixth in Spain.
Richard Burns, who had been second in Argentina in May, later took three
third places in the Finnish, German and Australian events. Since
September, he as well seemed to lose his touch. In the three asphalt
rallies run in October, he finished seventh in Italy and eighth in Spain.
Having fallen ill, he was unable to attend the Rally of Wales. The asphalt
specialist Gilles Panizzi was left without points in Monte Carlo and in
Germany, but he patched up by driving in points in all of the October
tarmac events. Panizzi was second in Italy, sixth in France and the
winner in Spain.
Was the 206 gravel version trampled by the development of the 307?
At the beginning of the season, Harri Rovanperä was fighting among the
top in all the rallies he was in, before hitting technical problems or retiring.
Statistics show that, during the first part of the season, he posted the
fourth highest number of stage wins, 15 in all. The last time a Peugeot
206 WRC was in the second place in a gravel event was in Cyprus in
June, driven by Rovanperä. After that, the car has been in the same or
better position only in three asphalt events.
It has been estimated that Peugeot team, while developing the new 307,
didn’t want to put any more effort into developing the 206 gravel car at the
end of the year, but that all the resources that could be invested in the old
model were focused on the asphalt car. The results of all their drivers at
the end of the season do seem to support this impression.
(text: Aarni Paljakka)
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