Today's meeting

[WRCfan]

Abby Dabby probably has very good facilities for the teams and officials. Just compare the Yas Marina F1 track with something like Silverstone. Okay, so it has no history, character or spectators but those things are just not interesting to the world of big money.

Rallying and F1 are in 2 different worlds. Money now controls yes, but think about suitability for F1 vs rallying in regard to Abu Dhabi and Silverstone.

F1 has the Yas marina track which is perfect for F1, but Abu Dhabi needs a decent ROAD to go rallying on, (not desert sandbox) and from what I have heard the desert is going to be graded by a grader for them to race on.

Now try and tell me Abu Dhabi deserves a rally over the likes of NZ, Greece, Finland, UK...It's sad loosing out 'good' rallies to jokes because some rich old men think their slow sponsored driver being there earns them the rights to an event...

[Barreis]

For me every country in the world deserves to have WRC event at least once..

[Mirek]

The thing is that Abu Dhabi is the biggest investor in WRC and from that position they can ask something...

[WRCfan]

Yeah true, it's just sad to see good quality rallies disappear so they can parade the WRC round like a pet. No one wants to see the drivers spend 1/2 the rally digging their cars out of the sand like the Dakar drivers have to.

Common sense has almost totally gone...

[Camelopard]

Yeah true, it's just sad to see good quality rallies disappear so they can parade the WRC round like a pet. No one wants to see the drivers spend 1/2 the rally digging their cars out of the sand like the Dakar drivers have to.

Common sense has almost totally gone...

OK I'll bite, just where has there been a case of where "drivers spend 1/2 the rally digging their cars out of the sand" in recent history.

Of course apart from the much lamented and much missed classic rally in Kenya called the Safari!

I can't let your comment about common sense pass by either! If you hadn't noticed 'money' and the influence it brings, makes the world go round! If you have it you can 'do' things, as much as a lot of people don't like it the middle east have a bucket load of the stuff (along with sand and oil! )

Why was the rally stopped in WA? Easy, not enough money to run it! The government of WA in their wisdom decided they weren't going to help continue funding it. Do you think they really cared about the 'history' of that event and how not running it may upset the purists involved in the sport?

Why do you think the new rally Oz is in northern NSW? In part because of the funding given to it by NSW Events Corp. It would make much more sense to run it out of QLD, do you really think the NSW govt is going to help fund it then?

Talking about sand boxes, you sound like you have spat the dummy, thrown all your toys out of the sand box, stormed of home taking your bat and ball with you!!!! (said with tongue planted firmly in the cheek!!!!!!)

[WRCfan]

Yeah I have thrown my toys out of the cot over this one, it's no secret. After 20 years of following international rallying and watching events which are ideally suited to rallying and some spectacular rallies, I appreciate many of the places the WRC visits and has visited.

Money does talk, yes I acknowledge that, it's got good points such as boosting the profile of our sport, but then it has bad points such as good rallies being pushed aside in favour of 'lining the top brass pockets'. They don't particularly care how unspectacular, suitable the location is, they just see dollar signs.

The Aussie rally had it's issues, ideally QLD you mentioned would be best although NSW is still perfectly adequate to hold a WRC. I just don't see how Abu Dhabi can provide decent roads in order to hold a WRC event which is of the calibre we have, and have seen in the past.

Maybe 20 years of watching A+ rallies has me so much more skeptical about these kind of events, although if they hold a candidate one and it is successful I will welcome it. If they can pull it off and produce a spectacle from a sporting point of view then I will keep quiet but if it is nothing more than sand-wacking in the dunes then myself (and probably almost everyone else) will be more than disappointed.

[Daniel]

OK I'll bite, just where has there been a case of where "drivers spend 1/2 the rally digging their cars out of the sand" in recent history.

Of course apart from the much lamented and much missed classic rally in Kenya called the Safari!

I can't let your comment about common sense pass by either! If you hadn't noticed 'money' and the influence it brings, makes the world go round! If you have it you can 'do' things, as much as a lot of people don't like it the middle east have a bucket load of the stuff (along with sand and oil! )

Why was the rally stopped in WA? Easy, not enough money to run it! The government of WA in their wisdom decided they weren't going to help continue funding it. Do you think they really cared about the 'history' of that event and how not running it may upset the purists involved in the sport?

Why do you think the new rally Oz is in northern NSW? In part because of the funding given to it by NSW Events Corp. It would make much more sense to run it out of QLD, do you really think the NSW govt is going to help fund it then?

Talking about sand boxes, you sound like you have spat the dummy, thrown all your toys out of the sand box, stormed of home taking your bat and ball with you!!!! (said with tongue planted firmly in the cheek!!!!!!)

He's right though.

The WA decision was a stupid one. It was the big event that we had back then which showed the state off to a world audience. It brought in more money for the state than it cost, that was a fact so they money argument really can't be used.

The Rally Commission is full of 'tards. Sending the WRC to in the middle east is just going to make the WRC less popular. What needs to be done is the make some common sense decisions to improve the show, make the series cheaper to enter and have some STABILITY in the regs but also change things quickly enough. The FIA seems to have been able to both change the regs too many times and also not do anything for a long time The writing was on the was when Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Skoda and Peugeot pulled out FFS!!!!! Since then WRCars have lost active front and rear diffs, S2000 has come (and is going) and now we think? we've got S1600T? The WRC didn't need things like stupidrally back when it was in decline, it didn't need to lose CORE events like the Monte, Rally Australia, the Safari, San Remo and Corsica.

The FIA effectively ringbarked the WRC and now they're probably going to try everything except just putting it back to where it was 8 or 9 years ago to sort it

[Daniel]

Yeah I have thrown my toys out of the cot over this one, it's no secret. After 20 years of following international rallying and watching events which are ideally suited to rallying and some spectacular rallies, I appreciate many of the places the WRC visits and has visited.

Money does talk, yes I acknowledge that, it's got good points such as boosting the profile of our sport, but then it has bad points such as good rallies being pushed aside in favour of 'lining the top brass pockets'. They don't particularly care how unspectacular, suitable the location is, they just see dollar signs.

The Aussie rally had it's issues, ideally QLD you mentioned would be best although NSW is still perfectly adequate to hold a WRC. I just don't see how Abu Dhabi can provide decent roads in order to hold a WRC event which is of the calibre we have, and have seen in the past.

Maybe 20 years of watching A+ rallies has me so much more skeptical about these kind of events, although if they hold a candidate one and it is successful I will welcome it.

You're too soft dude.

This going to where the money is thing is BS. Sure, go to Japan because that's where the manufacturers are is fine. Oh but wait the FIA mismanaged rallying so badly that bother Japanese manufacturers pulled out Going to North America, I can understand that, there's a big market there, ditto with China or India. Going to places like Jordan or Abu Dhabi is just moronic because what does Citroen get out of going to a place like that?

For a rally to be in the WRC it should tick one of these boxes
1) Be a real test of man and machine
2) Be somewhere that is going to be of benegit to the manufacturers

Right now in the WRC you have the teams going to places like Jordan where I doubt they sell many cars at all and which don't exactly provide any classic action

[Ghostwalker]

Mmm, so if the Monte decides to stay with IRC, the WRC will start in Poland....., and end in Abu Dhabi......

Er, RallyGB should end the season - Abu Dhabi hasn't even run a candidate event, yet they seem to be booked in as the final round.

I heard on the radio a couple of days ago that FIA still haven't
decided if Rally Sweden will be in next season.
FIA will take the decision in April.

http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/varmland/sp...rtikel=3504073

[WRCfan]

You're too soft dude.

This going to where the money is thing is BS. Sure, go to Japan because that's where the manufacturers are is fine. Oh but wait the FIA mismanaged rallying so badly that bother Japanese manufacturers pulled out Going to North America, I can understand that, there's a big market there, ditto with China or India. Going to places like Jordan or Abu Dhabi is just moronic because what does Citroen get out of going to a place like that?

For a rally to be in the WRC it should tick one of these boxes
1) Be a real test of man and machine
2) Be somewhere that is going to be of benegit to the manufacturers

Right now in the WRC you have the teams going to places like Jordan where I doubt they sell many cars at all and which don't exactly provide any classic action

Your right haha, I should just be the ba****d and get rowdy over it.
The reason I give it a chance is because I am pretty sure it would be a joke of an event anyway, and be about as spectacular as the Jordan rally, (I think I remember seeing one tree in the 3 days of footage). In my opinion that rally is the biggest joke to date and I can see Abu Dhabi being exactly the same except for a super modern inner city super special...wont make up for the sandbox stages though...