[Guest]

I know the headline was generalising a little, but Tommi did say the 6 would have performed better than the 7 in San Remo. Now is this a question of the 7 being a bad Evolution? Or does the 7 just need some more time to be set-up properly (after all the work that has already gone into the car)? Will the 7 mean the end of Tommi's career at Mitsu? What are your opinions guys...

 

[Guest]

Agree, got the impression after watching it that Mr M is really not a happy man and the grass is looking greener to him on the other side!

 

[Guest]

Got to agree with you guys on this. Tommi looked very disillusioned with the 7. Not surprising really, he was way off the pace before putting it into the wall and fighting handling problems all the way. I know this is a real specialist rally and the 7 perhaps a bit on the large side for San Remo, but on previous form you would have expected Tommi to be a lot more competitive . I wasn't expecting the 7 to be that much different to the 6 with most parts under the skin being the same, not so sure now.

It was a brave or perhaps stupid move by Mitsubishi to introduce the 7 when Tommi has been going so well, joint leader of the championship with only a handle of rallies left. Undoubtedly Mitsubishi were under enormous commercial pressure to start rallying the 7. Wonder what Tommi's view on this is!

Dave

 

[Guest]

The report from tommi was that the car was pitching and rolling too much to give him confidence in the car.

It soudns simply like the spring rates/damper/anti-roll bar combination has not been calculated correctly and needs some development to find the optiumum. The 6 was a well known car to the mechanics and setup guys. The 7 will take a bit of learning.

If Tommi jumps ship based on the first event in the new car then he needs his head examining.

TonyC

 

[Guest]

I agree with Dave, I was a bit surprised too, as the 6 he was rallying for most of the season pretty much used the same parts as the 7 now. Yes, he said the car was rolling too much and I would be interested if the size of the car has something to do with it. I still think it's a bit of a poor showing by Mitsubishi to bring out a new car and actually lose time, when you look at how Subaru switched their car and got quicker or at least didn't lose speed. Like I said, it's either poor preparation and testing or the car is actually worse than the 6, at least at tarmac rallies, which is not good with the next rally in mind...

 

[Guest]

just my point of view this.
if you study the EVO7 for some time,then look straight back at an EVO6,the 7 looks the wrong shape for a rally car. the wheelbase seems to long, especially for a tarmac event. you only have to look at how well the peugeot,s and citroen,s are doing.they seem to be the right shape.theEVO6 looks a lot more squat than the 7.i wonder though, if this might be all change on a gravel event.i to feel that tommi might become dissilusioned with the car , especially after all the testing theyve done and a poor first result.if he leaves i would like to make myself available as first team driver.all the best.

 

[Guest]

Simakinen - an interesting point raise here. Don't know if you have seen the Evo 6 Rally car down at Ralliart but the front wheels are pushed as far forward as they possibly can be and almost foul the front of the wheel arch. When asked about this, I was told that the this car (along with the rest of the front running 6's) wheel base had been extended to improve handling and predictability and guess what, they tell me that the modified Evo 6 Rally car's wheel base is identical to that of the new 7 (however I did not take a tape measure to it). Now whether this is an advantage in gravel situations or Tarmac is not clear to me and wait to see what other forum members more qualified than me think.

 

[Guest]

Mitsubishi had no choice but to introduce the new car at this time. It was the latest possible time agreed with the FIA.

It was either turn up with the new car or face a £ 250,000 fine. (I think that was per car also.)

 

[Guest]

With the longer wheelbase, the Evo7 should work better in gravel.
Didnt they go to the 7 because they wanted more suspension travel in the rear and that's more useful for gravel than tarmac.

With a longer and heavier car, it would seem like the Evo7 would be less competitive on tarmac and seems to be the case right now. The next rally is also tarmac ?

 

[Guest]

They had introduced the longer wheeltravel (in the rear) at the beginning of the season already. I was of the opinion that the 6 that he was rallying until now was pretty much the same as the 7 (wheelbase, suspension and all) just with a different bodyshell. Tommi's remarks about the car at San Remo surprised me because of that.

 

[Guest]

Rear suspension travel on the 6 was still limited compared to the new 7. There is too mch metal work to allow the full range of movement on the 6. Even with the grafted on arches.
There is small artical about the 7 in this months 'racecar engineer magazine' - if you can find a copy !

I'm sure this last rally was a setup error, because through-out testing the drivers have said the 7 feels a better car than the old 6 group A car.

A longer wheel base can make a car less 'flickable', but now the and amp; is a WRC that can move the engine etc around to get the weight distribution correct to reduce this effect, and still gain from the stability of the longer wheelbase.
And is the WRC actually heavier ? I know the road car is compared to the 6, but the WRC car is allowed measures to reduce weight.

The new 7 is using stuff that the rally team have not used before (such as dual reservoir dampers) and they will need to learn the optimum configurations for such kit.

Don't damn the 7 based on one poor rally. The E1 and E2 never managed wins but their development lead to the E3 onwards that did pretty well

TonyC

 

[Guest]

The E1 and E2 never managed wins but their development lead to the E3 onwards that did pretty well That's pretty worrying if you mean that the 7 could be the same as the 1 or 2 on the WRC stage... Also, you say that the drivers said that the 7 feels better than the 6 Gr.A car, what did they think of the comparison of the 6 WRC car with the 7 WRC? And on what surfaces? The fact seems to be as displayed by the Citroen's this season that the smaller the car, the faster it'll be on tarmac...

 

[Guest]

I imagine development woudl run quicker on the 7 compared to the 1/2. Also they didn;t get tommi until they were running the 3.

Both the test driver and Tommi said the E7 WRC felt good on tarmac, even as far back as the begining of the year when they first started testing. Even to the point that they stopped construction of the 6.5 parts (perhaps this is why they have had to use the 7 near the end of the season as well)
The E7 has a number of changes over the 6 WRC (well not a real WRC) for the better, principally greater wheel travel. However the Evo WRC is not an Evo 7. Its a Lancer Cedia with a WRC kit of parts. Some of which happen to be the same as the E7. IE rear suspension is not the same as the 6.5 or the E7. It features a weird quasi-strut that acts like the old double-wishbone style the Evo's use to have whilst at the same time providing the benefits of the macpherson strut that all the other WRC cars run.. IE they can have lots of wheel travel without the wheel altering camber badly. This new build will be the soruce of the setup errors on the last rally, I'm sure

Ok, usually a smaller, squater car is more nimble, but that is becuase it is inherently less stable. Making it harder to drive and more likly to suffer an accident. And you have to compormise some of the setup to get them to be stable in fast corners, etc. The long wheel base of the 7 makes the car more stable. The turn in and agility problems can be (mostly) addressed by weight distribution, decent suspension setup and the trick diffs (Mitsubishi use a differnt style of diff to everyone else that is more sophisticated).

Would a WRC Xsara be any good on gravel or on the safari ? How will the Lancer WRC fair on the Rally of GB ? That may be a better benchmark.

TonyC

 

[Guest]

Geezers take it easy on the 7 its only the 7 1st rally. Yes i do agree with u that it was a bit stupid of mitsy introducing the 7 when tommi was not doing too badly in the 6. Come on dudes u know that car is not only 2 blame look at tommi recent results u can see that he was ####in it up in recent rallys, the main reason 4 why he was leading the championship was because the other cars and drivers were not doing 2 well at the start of the rally season.

 

[Guest]

I think GWADD has the answer.

Realistically I think Tommi's position had more to do with how good the 206 and amp; Citroen are on Tarmac. You could see he was frustrated and amp; anyone else would be given how close he is to another WRC title but in the overall scheme of things he was only 1 position down on Colin McRae and amp; it was the cars 1st event. Put it another way the car should be competitive by the time 2002 arrives.

 

[Guest]

Come on Guys, I think you are all being a bit blinkered here. The 6 started the season as the car to beat but Mitsubishi had to do something as the rivals were getting better and better. There is no way that TM would have won the championship in the old car.

As for the car being slower than the 6, as I have said before, give it a chance. I agree with the comments that point out that being beaten on tarmac by specialists in kit cars is no real test. Don't write the car or the season of yet.

In addition, I am confused. I thought the 7 was the first WRC spec car from Mitsubishi and that the 6's were all grp.a cars.

 

[Guest]

Gentlemen

Considering the tongue lashing that Ralliarts E7 Extreme S costing 41K received from CCC`s trackday shoot out compared with a STD UK300 Impreza costing only 26,5K I`m not suprised that Mr T isn`t happy with the 7 .

Out of 13 cars they labelled it the biggest disappointment of the entire test , under steered to oblivion but it produced flames out of the exhaust as required by Ralliart customers , this just high lights the priorities of Ralliarts development programme.

I suggest anyone serious about trackdays must read this article , I have just been out in a test drive in a Megabusa THIS IS A SERIOUS TRACK CAR .

 

[Guest]

Where do you find the CCC trackday article ?
Can someone post an online copy ?

The new impreza took a while to start winning races, so maybe we can expect the same from the Evo7.

Thanks

- ron

 

[Guest]

I think Mitsubishi got a little ahead of themselves when they agreed with the FIA the actual date the 7 would be released. They obvioulsy needed a bit more time for development and Tommi pretty much lead us to believe. Mind you Subaru took a while to make the new ugly impreza competitive. The strange thing is that underneath it is pretty much a 6! So lets hope they start fixing things fast!

 

[Guest]

The E7 Extreme S did get a real slating by CCC, but still came in with the 3rd quickest lap time if I remember right. All Ralliart could put the understeer down to was the tyres, Yokahama's. They also drove it from Dudley to Anglesey and had great fun with it, so it's not all bad.

Dave