Yves Matton, believes that the Citroën Total Abu Dhabi World Rally Team can achieve a win later this season but had expected the team to be higher up the manufacturers championship standings at this point in the season.
“When you try to be second in the Championship and you are fourth you are not really like expected.” said Matton in the press conference ahead of the Xion Rally Argentina 2015. “The worst was in Sweden where we expected a podium and due to some small technical issues and some driver issues, it was not the case.”
Despite the disappointment, Matton has seen some hope from the season so far, “If you also want to see the positive, in Monte Carlo Sebastien Loeb was able to show the performance of the new car and also what the team did at the end of last year, and Mads also in Mexico he was able to fight until the end of the rally and to finish in the second place. The car is working very well, now we need a little bit to perform better and maybe to be a little more lucky.”
Matton believes that the team can succeed and puts a lot of hope in Kris Meeke, “We worked a lot with Kris for more than one year. He showed very interesting things in the second part of the season and for sure the first part of the season this year was not like expected.
“We tried to understand, I don’t really want to say what we tried to put in place for him. Sometimes when you work too much it maybe doesn’t go in a good way. He wants so much to perform and to try to go so fast that sometimes maybe you need to take some time to try another way.”
Meeke is once again paired with Mads Østberg this season and Matton is confident that there will be a win before the season finishes.“I’m convinced the car is on the level and we will continue to work on the car. It’s been a long time now we are not able to perform well with those cars on the rally, but for sure it will happen in one of these rallies.”
In a bid to assit its two drivers, Citroën will be introducing upgrades to the DS3’s later this year, “The first step will be in Portugal where we will have some new aerodynamic package. We are working on the main subject for the second part of the year. It is difficult to say at the moment when it will appear, it will depend on lots of tests.”
