What the heck happened to Mitsubishi?

[Suigi]

I'm watching the WRC this year, rooting on Panizzi and Sohlberg and Sola and Galli, and came to these conclusions:
1. The team would have a lot more points if the car would stop breaking down every single race!!
2. What the heck happened to the Mitsubishi of yesteryear, the team that gave Makinen four straight championships, and even won it themselves in 1998? Did Tommi really matter THAT much?

 

[-Fred-]

3 Simple reasons:

1- They switched to a much bigger car in late 2001 (the EVO VII), killing off the car that helped them clinch the 4 titles, which is their hugest mistake, IMO.

2- Tommi Makinen. A guy with that much talent and expertise is hard to replace, if not impossible.

3- They're broke. No money = no development, which in turn equals to poor results.

 

[DRIFT4EVA]

Hmmmm They should ask Toyota F1 for a Loan.

This is not a very important year championship wise, for Mitsubishi. They're trying to sort out their parts conbinations and all of that crap. Still. you'd think that they're be doing a little better.

 

[RyosukeFCDS]

The new Evo they're using is dog ugly but the concept behind it is stop on in what you want in a rally car, when they introduce that i'd say they're going to make a killing, but they do need to get some good drivers in. If i was them i'd forget this year, they've got no hope, and concentrate on future times.
But on the plus side, in the Australian Rallys the Mitsubishi team are killing it. In all classes.

 

[Sleek Stratos]

Give it a year or two, they'll start sucking a lot less. 👍 (not that they'll clinch the manufaturers champioship however) As PunkRock said, switching to the Evo VII was a costly mistake, or rather Mitsubishi making it as big as it did was a costly mistake, Mitsu Motorsport will run what the manufacturer puts out. Tommi did a phenomenal job doing what he could in the Evo VII quite frankly.

I'd like to know what happened with those rumors saying that Mitsubishi were likely to run the Colt in the WRC.

 

[Yuichi]

The reasons why the Mitsu suck sooo much is because they built their cars (up until the EVO VI) to Group A regulations and didn't have any experience in building towards the WRC regulations. That was 3 years ago. Now, they come back into the WRC with pretty much with what they started with in their first attempt a WRCar. In conclusion, Mitsubishi Motor Sport are a complete joke because they are using obsolete equipment.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I read recently that after Rallye Deutschland, they're taking the rest of the year off. They've got some key gremlins (mainly with the gearbox) that they need to sort before they can start worrying about making the car quick.

 

[Suigi]

Yeah, that's what I heard this year is all about.
And if they start racing the Colt, millions of Evo fans will cry out "WTF?!" in unison.
I will be one of them.

 

[Hell Patrol]

Their new engineers can't do the jobs.

 

[PublicSecrecy]

There was recently an instance where the Mitsubishi actually selected 2 gears at once which forced them to go to a stock drivetrain and gearbox, losing them about a second and a half/mile.

 

[Evo7GTA]

I'm watching the WRC this year, rooting on Panizzi and Sohlberg and Sola and Galli, and came to these conclusions:
1. The team would have a lot more points if the car would stop breaking down every single race!!
2. What the heck happened to the Mitsubishi of yesteryear, the team that gave Makinen four straight championships, and even won it themselves in 1998? Did Tommi really matter THAT much?

No offence should be taken here, but come on man the car is in development this year, do you really expect it to be on par with the other cars? If you saw Catalunya you would see that the development is paying off with Dani Sola and Gianliugi Galli finishing in sixth and seventh places respectively.

 

[McLaren]

Makinen is racing for Subaru, correct? So I'm guessing Subaru's wins have gone up?

Well, Subaru's wins in Rally were pretty good before him though. 👍

 

[prisonermonkeys]

One of the reasons Mitsubishi is faltering lately is because they decided to develop a WRC car with the Evo VII.

The death of Henri Toivonen in 1986 meant that Group B and Group S cars were banned instantly, and a new Group A was introduced. While the safety of Group A was second to none, the sport was also a little boring. But as manufacturers got into it, cars like the 555 Impreza and the Lancer came into their own. As they started to push the boundaries of development, the FIA decided that it was time to introduce a new formula - WRC.

Pretty soon every team had built a WRC car and were racing it. With one exception - Mitsubishi. Every Lancer from the original Evo to the Evo VI was classified as a Group A car compared to the WRC. Mitsubishi saw a slight loophole in the rules and exploited it perfectly - under Group A laws they were able to make more modifications to the car over the year than WRC cars, they could be lighter and there were other rules that weren't as strict. Every other team jumped at the opportunity to develop a new WRC car feeling the Group A cars were not worth it, but Mitsubishi alone saw that they could build the Evos and still be competitive. So, essentially, all those World Rally Championships were not won by a WRC car. They were won by a Group A car.

It's the same as when Audi introduced the 4WD Quatto back in the '80s. No other team saw the potential of 4WD and when Audi asked would they mind if a 4WD car was run, the others all laughed because the only 4WD car Audi had made was a 75bhp truck-like vehicle for use in the military. But Adi introduced the Quattro, blew away the competition and made history.