He’ll never do it while Loeb is still driving in WRC unless Citroen pulls a Subaru…
Does “damn near close” mean 4th overall in the championship?
The talent level of Loeb, Gronholm and Solberg are on a whole other level vs. the rest of the WRC. Loeb has more consistency than either Solberg or Gronholm though. Hirvonen has proven himself this year, but the Focus WRC was also the ringer car. Even driving that car, he was not able to keep up with Gronholm on raw speed, though he usually put some comfortable amount of time between himself and the next driver.
Pastrana will need to be able to consistently beat the 2nd tier of WRC drivers like Stohl, Sordo, Galli, Pons, Gardemeister, and Atkinson if he is to live up to these high expectations. That’s a tall order because even those 2nd tier drivers are very talented. Not all of them have the greatest teams backing them up however, and that will be to Pastrana’s advantage. Of course, that’s assuming Subaru can turn things around for 2007.
Too many new things going on to really make the call right now. I can’t wait for the next season to start.