Richards highly encouraged by MINI debut

David Richards believes MINI’s John Cooper Works WRC "set the standard" during its world championship debut on the Italian island of Sardinia last week.

The MINI WRC Team chief, whose Prodrive organisation designed and developed the John Cooper Works WRC, was speaking after watching Kris Meeke set a top-three stage time and Dani Sordo reach the finish in sixth overall.

“I think we have shown the performance of the car,” said Richards. “We have proved what we can do and I think it has set the mark and set the standard. I wish Kris could have carried on the way he was in the early stages. If he had carried on like that I think we would have been in a very strong position, but that is life, this is testing and we are learning as we go along.

“All signs are really encouraging and we have no real reliability problems at all that we are concerned about. We have to take a lot of positives from the event.”

While Sordo celebrated his return to the WRC with a strong haul of points, Meeke’s event ended prematurely following retirements on days one and two due to a sticking throttle and water leak respectively.

“On Sunday morning we had to take the decision not to re-start with Kris. We know what the problem is but we didn’t have a solution to it here, and anything we did would have been compromised and may have resulted in a recurrence of the problem. I just didn’t believe it was worthwhile taking that risk. We know how to fix it and it can be fixed in a few weeks’ time with the right components.

“What has come out of this weekend very strongly is that we have a real team effort and all members of the MINI WRC Team have instantly gelled together. I want to thank everyone for the hard work to get us to this point. It has been an amazing effort and the outcome has been very encouraging for all of us.”

MINI’s efforts were recognised with the prestigious Abu Dhabi Spirit of the Rally Award, which is presented on all rounds of the world championship.