Tony's Rally Blog 1: Advantage Hirvonen

Eight down, seven to go, and with just three points separating Mikko Hirvonen and Sebastian Loeb in the drivers' championship standings it really couldn't be much closer. Hirvonen consistent, with two victories and no blanks so far, the Frenchman in imperious form on five of this year's events but forced to accept the proverbial nul points in Sweden and Jordan.

If Mikko does take the 2008 WRC crown it will be interesting to see whether he will incur the same kind of criticism from the Finnish media that was directed at Richard Burns when he became world champion back in 2001 with only a single victory that year on Rally New Zealand to his name. I rather think not! Alas, both Richard Burns and Colin McRae are no longer with us, and we are left to speculate when, where or even if a new British rally talent will emerge.

Fickle business, motorsport. In formula one every driver's ambition in practice is to end up on pole, while currently in rally circles there is much talk of tactics and deliberately dropping off the pace in order to avoid sweeping the road the following day. Sebastian Loeb looked more than a bit miffed at the press conference after the Rally of Turkey a couple of weeks ago - third place quite obviously wasn't to his liking. Sweeping the road and simultaneously doing your best to keep the tyres in some sort of driveable state in that heat is certainly not easy, though to be fair the same rules apply to all.

Personally I never understood why they changed the 'top fifteen drive in reverse order' rule, though on the other hand, if I had ten euro for every wacky decision FIA have made over the past thirty or forty years I'd be lying on the beach in the Bahamas now rather than hacking out this column for you lot.

Right, so let's get down to business and do a little bit of predicting. After all, I'm supposed to be some kind of expert, aren't I? Well, Petter Solberg, nice new car, but unless things go disastrously wrong for Ford and Citroen he's got no chance. Mikko, he's supposed to win Rally Finland, and with local knowledge, a partisan crowd, and a solid car he should do so. It's statistically Loeb's turn to take a victory in Finland, but does he need to? Seb is a dab hand at picking up good points in Jyväskylä without busting a gut or his C4 in the Finnish forest. Tactics, you see… Oh yes, and expect fireworks from Jari-Matti – until Saturday lunchtime at least when Malcolm Wilson, in that fatherly manner, has a quiet word in his ear. And my dark horse? Estonia's Urmo Aava, who finished a highly creditable seventh last year.

So mull over that lot, write to me if you've got nothing else to do, and get yourself prepared for another feast of rallying on 99.3 MHz. Now I'm off to do a little rally recce of my own – but more of that later!

30.6.2008 Tony Melville