Richard Burns = poor looser

Finland · Peugeot · Richard Burns · 19/08/2003 13:40:22

Richard Burns' recently announced move back to Subaru for 2004 throws up all sorts of questions and thoughts. wrc.com's Anthony Peacock muses…

"People must have wondered why I left a team with which I had just won the World Championship. But I had achieved with Subaru what I had set out to achieve with them."

Richard Burns, Driving Ambition, 2002


History occasionally has a habit of biting back, but there's one historical element that could well end up repeating itself. Richard Burns might once more end up as a departing World Champion this year (unless, of course, his 206 grenades itself on every remaining round of the World Championship).

It's ironic really that some people consider Richard's Peugeot experience to be something of a mistake or failure, when the reality is that he's been leading the World Championship this year since the third round. But he's not won a rally with Peugeot yet, and Richard is tired of trying to justify that to the world at large (and himself).

What Richard's said in the past is that he's never had the same feeling with the 206 that he had with the Subaru, and that he's had to significantly adapt his driving style to try and get the best out of it. "It sometimes feels that I'm sitting on top of the car rather than in it," he explained, but that's not been a new problem. Richard was actually in pain during his early tests with the 206, as he found that the seat was uncomfortable. Since then, he's become bored of having to explain why the car doesn't suit him, and fed up with the constant comparison against Marcus Gronholm. Much as they constantly deny it, Peugeot is Marcus's team.

Then there was the debacle of Richard's engineer. His original engineer, Jean-Charles Odon, was sacked at the start of this year because he and Richard were not getting on. Peugeot Sport boss Corrado Provera compared it to a marriage break-up, in his typically florid way. But the episode put Richard back, as he effectively missed out on a year's useful development time. It was only the arrival of Christian Deltombe in March that set Richard on track with the 206.

There's no doubting that the car has brought him results. But Richard's clearly decided that it's not just winning alone that counts (although that's been a problem so far): it's the way that you do it. Richard has had a lot of stick, and has been forced to defend himself when really there's nothing to defend. He also knows that this won't happen anywhere else.

"I don't understand why people feel the need to have a go at me," he said last month. "I'm happy to be leading the championship and I want to go on doing so for as long as I can, in whatever way I like. I'm not basing everything on consistency: I go into each rally trying to win. That's why I've had so many podiums. But I obviously never imagined that I would get this far into my career at Peugeot and not have won with the car yet."

At Subaru – the company that gave him eight of his 10 career victories to date – he hopes to rediscover that winning feeling. Richard's already driven an early version of Peugeot's 2004 contender (the 307WRC) but it clearly wasn't enough to persuade him to stay.

He's also blasted a huge hole in the driver transfer market, as Peugeot are now in need of a permanent top-line driver. Colin McRae is one possibility, as is Freddy Loix. Beyond that, there's little choice. With Gilles Panizzi also heading off, Peugeot need somebody as good on asphalt as they are on gravel – which probably rules out Harri Rovanpera as well.

Subaru meanwhile have got a pretty good line-up for the future. Back in March, team principal David Lapworth said: "We wouldn't rule out Richard coming back. There's no outstanding bad feeling on either part for what happened in 2001."

Obviously not…



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