Rally Ireland your Views.............

[urabus-denoS2000]

I love those Irish stages,in my opinion the best in the world!

I think it shuld be a full-time WRC rally,especially because WRC needs more tarmac rallys

[Karukera]

Great scennery, green, rainy, challenging, with competent organizers responsive to the weather conditions. A great rally.

[AndyRAC]

Keep Rally Ireland, but run it in the summer months.

[Viking]

I am most stunned over how fast it is, 110,5 km/h (even in these conditions) makes it the fastest tarmac rally in the series.
If it was dry I guess it would be up there with Rally Finland.

[A.F.F.]

Keep Rally Ireland, but run it in the summer months.

I agree 100%. Not only because the road conditions but also the beautiful Irish scenery

[Daniel]

they should'a ran 7 & 8...

So someone who was there says it's too dangerous and you with your in depth knowledge of weather and road conditions in the British Isles say otherwise?

For me the rally itself looked great and I can't fault the event and how it was run but the coverage and championship being played out just didn't do the event justice.

[pino]

Ireland is a great event wich deserves a visit in the next years , but I agree it should be runned in summer-time. And I still prefere the Monte as opening season event, Turini on snow is unbeatable

[MJW]

At the risk of being banned by moderators if I break forum rules but I saw this post on another forum and here it is. In my opinion an accurate summary of Rally Ireland and the WRC in general. I 100% agree with this.....

having spent the last 3 days behind the scenes on rally ireland - a few things struck me....... firstly though the tv crews cameramen, reporters, journalists and backroom personnel all work hard - start at 4 am each day finish at 9 pm if lucky ...... I saw no sign of anyone "living it up on expenses" .
The first thing that struck me though was that they are all very aware of who is paying for the WRC in its current form. For Citroen, Abu Dhabi, Airwaves and this weekend local sponsors Discover Ireland.com, and northern ireland tourist board....... producers, cameramen and everyone I met is focussed first and foremost to make sure the sponsors get their logos on telly - by definition then it is a second prority to get the story.
I was also a little dissapointed to see that (perhaps unsurprisingly) some of our WRC stars are also suffering from a little prima donna syndrome - this would appear to be more prevalent among the "salaried" stars. Henning Solberg and young Burkhart appeared to be the only guys who were genuinely excited to be competing in the event.

at the end I am left with the impression that the wrc as an entity has been taken over by marketing people who have an interest in rallying rather than rally obsessives who know how to string together a decent tv program. Plum Tyndall and Mick Bracken of RPM Motorsport are first and foremost rally fan's. This to me is a result that WRC should follow an F1 model - the last time i saw this was at the dawn of professional rugby -it took some time for Bath (kings of the amatuer game) and other teams to figure out it could not compete with the football premiership - it had to find its own place in the world.

Rallyings corporate guests today are entertained in the service park (my guide to eating your way through all the hospitality tents may well see publication some day) not out on the stages. Rallying is about the stages not the service area.

WRC has a problem - its too flash and too expensive and has started to put too many marketing people between the sport and the fans. It has people spending scarce resources making the sport narrower by over regulation and standardisation rather than opening things up. The corporate world are given passes with a knife and fork logo that allow them to get into an area that neither Joe Public, the drivers or mechanics inhabit. They have a fine lunch, see one service and think they have been to "the rally". Rallyings great strength I always believed was its accessability and the thrill when car 1 came into view at the first corner you picked to spectate on an event - I wonder if WRC rallying neutered.

One person explained to me that they couldnt understand why JWRC was so undersubscribed when the concept of a young guy in a small car was so perfect. It does sond natty from a marketing point of view but the same person had no idea of the cost of purchasing and running a JWRC car. This and the lack of somewhere to go if successful had been completely missed.

WRC / ISC people are in equal parts jealous of and completely scared at the burgeoning success of IRC - it will be interesting to see how things go over the next few years. Citroen are french and as long as they love rallying they will continue but someday some new idea will arrive and they will go elsewhere - MSport and MW are fantastic supporters of rallying but are a completely commercial organisation - there is no "love" in the WRC - its just business.

going down the marketing led route has led to Neil Cole (a sound bloke) running a really good entertainment program based on rallying - I dont think Dave are attempting to produce the "historical record" of the event. Football has many entertainment programs based on football - it has its place

For WRC to survive (and it has brought us some horny cars) it needs to find a way to develop the sport and also make it commercially viable - to me this requires a simplificaton of the rules both technical and ISC / WRC non rally administrative bollox - an example - local competitors would not enter rally ireland as they could not use their own tyres ??
I dont condone going back to living in a cave and i wont call for a return to the old days - things must progress - one of the best ideas I heard was that WRC Virtual Spectator type technology offers similar internet betting type opportunites to horse racing - if rallying could capture 0.01% of the international internet betting market - money would not be a problem in the sport - but it wouldnt be rallying "like the olddays" either.

At the end of the day everything works in cycles - maybe we are in transition - IRC more affordable, more accessable - more "real rallying" - it might be the successful future of rallying.

[alexlake]

thought it looked good on tv, weather and look of wales, just on tarmac, not gravel!. lots of crashes, punctures, moving round of leaderboard (part from loeb), all makes for a good rally i reckon.

shame on number of cars entered though.

[ProRally]

At the risk of being banned by moderators if I break forum rules but I saw this post on another forum and here it is. In my opinion an accurate summary of Rally Ireland and the WRC in general. I 100% agree with this.....

having spent the last 3 days behind the scenes on rally ireland - a few things struck me....... firstly though the tv crews cameramen, reporters, journalists and backroom personnel all work hard - start at 4 am each day finish at 9 pm if lucky ...... I saw no sign of anyone "living it up on expenses" .
The first thing that struck me though was that they are all very aware of who is paying for the WRC in its current form. For Citroen, Abu Dhabi, Airwaves and this weekend local sponsors Discover Ireland.com, and northern ireland tourist board....... producers, cameramen and everyone I met is focussed first and foremost to make sure the sponsors get their logos on telly - by definition then it is a second prority to get the story.
I was also a little dissapointed to see that (perhaps unsurprisingly) some of our WRC stars are also suffering from a little prima donna syndrome - this would appear to be more prevalent among the "salaried" stars. Henning Solberg and young Burkhart appeared to be the only guys who were genuinely excited to be competing in the event.

at the end I am left with the impression that the wrc as an entity has been taken over by marketing people who have an interest in rallying rather than rally obsessives who know how to string together a decent tv program. Plum Tyndall and Mick Bracken of RPM Motorsport are first and foremost rally fan's. This to me is a result that WRC should follow an F1 model - the last time i saw this was at the dawn of professional rugby -it took some time for Bath (kings of the amatuer game) and other teams to figure out it could not compete with the football premiership - it had to find its own place in the world.

Rallyings corporate guests today are entertained in the service park (my guide to eating your way through all the hospitality tents may well see publication some day) not out on the stages. Rallying is about the stages not the service area.

WRC has a problem - its too flash and too expensive and has started to put too many marketing people between the sport and the fans. It has people spending scarce resources making the sport narrower by over regulation and standardisation rather than opening things up. The corporate world are given passes with a knife and fork logo that allow them to get into an area that neither Joe Public, the drivers or mechanics inhabit. They have a fine lunch, see one service and think they have been to "the rally". Rallyings great strength I always believed was its accessability and the thrill when car 1 came into view at the first corner you picked to spectate on an event - I wonder if WRC rallying neutered.

One person explained to me that they couldnt understand why JWRC was so undersubscribed when the concept of a young guy in a small car was so perfect. It does sond natty from a marketing point of view but the same person had no idea of the cost of purchasing and running a JWRC car. This and the lack of somewhere to go if successful had been completely missed.

WRC / ISC people are in equal parts jealous of and completely scared at the burgeoning success of IRC - it will be interesting to see how things go over the next few years. Citroen are french and as long as they love rallying they will continue but someday some new idea will arrive and they will go elsewhere - MSport and MW are fantastic supporters of rallying but are a completely commercial organisation - there is no "love" in the WRC - its just business.

going down the marketing led route has led to Neil Cole (a sound bloke) running a really good entertainment program based on rallying - I dont think Dave are attempting to produce the "historical record" of the event. Football has many entertainment programs based on football - it has its place

For WRC to survive (and it has brought us some horny cars) it needs to find a way to develop the sport and also make it commercially viable - to me this requires a simplificaton of the rules both technical and ISC / WRC non rally administrative bollox - an example - local competitors would not enter rally ireland as they could not use their own tyres ??
I dont condone going back to living in a cave and i wont call for a return to the old days - things must progress - one of the best ideas I heard was that WRC Virtual Spectator type technology offers similar internet betting type opportunites to horse racing - if rallying could capture 0.01% of the international internet betting market - money would not be a problem in the sport - but it wouldnt be rallying "like the olddays" either.

At the end of the day everything works in cycles - maybe we are in transition - IRC more affordable, more accessable - more "real rallying" - it might be the successful future of rallying.

A very true statement that I too agree with....
Like many of us already said the 'real' rallying from the good old days are gone, with night stages, 40+ different stages, road side service and so on.
The current format is made for the marketing guys, who unfortunatly can not sell the packages and it must compete with other forms of motorsport. They SHOULD be afraid from IRC, but also we know that it going to hard to top the Monte Carlo show from a few weeks ago with fantastic coverage.
We live in strange times at the moment, so who now S2000+ ? Even the untouchable F1 is looking stupid with the wide nose and narrow rear spoilers... even talk of a standard engine... again we live in strange times.