Rally Ireland super special stage a bit far

[sills]

The event begins on Thursday 15 November with the Super Special Stage in the grounds of the Stormont Parliament Buildings in Belfast. Competition over the four days will also take in a route that covers seven more counties in the north-west of the island: Fermanagh, Tyrone, Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal, Cavan and Roscommon.
Rally Headquarters will be at The Clarion Hotel in Sligo and the Service Park, where all necessary mechanical work on competing vehicles is carried out, will be at Sligo Institute of Technology.


What are the organisers at having the opening stage 100 + miles away from the headquarters (belfast to sligo), all the cars will have to travel back across the country to the service park after that, this is surley going to play against retaining a spot on the calander in future years, its a stupid decision to run the special stage there, yes it will be a spectacular stage, but tthats putting alot of traveling on teams just for one stage.

any comments??

[Bazza2541]

Its a bit of pandering to the forces of occupation. ;-)

[COD]

Well, at least last year Argentina held theirs in Buenos Aires, much further from rally HQ than this. Also when Acropolis was based in Lamia, the superspecial was sometimes in Athens, some 300km away. In both cases the cars were transported by lorries so no problem there

[Bjorn240]

I suspect you'll see much more of this in the future.

I think ISC aim to bring rally to more (and paying) fans by doing remote SSS in major cities. When I first heard of the Buenos Aires SSS, I thought, 'No way will that fly!' but it seems thoroughly well-planned and may be a big hit.

If it is, I'd not be surprised to see SSS in:

Stockholm (310km from Karlstad) or Gothenburg (296km from Karlstad)
Oslo (133km from Hamar)
Athens (well, duh)
Helsinki (274km from Jyväskylä)
Frankfurt (190km from Trier) or maybe Luxembourg?
Auckland
Barcelona

and so on over the next few years. Like it or not, spectators and fans are what make this possible, and I think we will see more promotion of remote SSS in the next few years. And really, Belfast to Sligo isn't such a trek, is it. 200km? Buenos Aires to Cordoba is 700km!

- Christian

[Tomi]

Sounds quite childish to drag the cars several 100 km for such pathetic thing as a superspecial, the real rallyfans goes to the stages anyway.
For the money they use for the transport of cars and planetickets for drivers, they could arrange free transport from big towns to the stages instead.

[Bjorn240]

Sounds quite childish to drag the cars several 100 km for such pathetic thing as a superspecial, the real rallyfans goes to the stages anyway.

I think the point is, the first year, you get casual fans at the SSS. Then the following year, you get them to come out to the stages. Seems reasonable to me.

As for what the real rally fans do... you can't have a sport in this day and age which is only supported by real hardcore fans.

Besides, pacenotes and all-wheel drive?! What's hardcore about that? Proper rallying is done in the nighttime with a map and a poti, preferably driving a Hillman Imp!

[sills]

may-be it will work but its wasting money for teams to do this, if they held a super special somewhere closer in all the countrie that have been listed above i bet they would still sell out

[Tomi]

As for what the real rally fans do... you can't have a sport in this day and age which is only supported by real hardcore fans.

Besides, pacenotes and all-wheel drive?! What's hardcore about that? Proper rallying is done in the nighttime with a map and a poti, preferably driving a Hillman Imp!

Offcourse you can have, to me it does not sound good to give a way or change the sport just to attract mainstream people, there is too much of this sss stuff already, the more power D.Richards get the lousier the future for rally looks in my opinion.
Pacenotes was already in the sixtees, but blind events are ok too, but thats a different thing.

[cut the b.s.]

Sounds quite childish to drag the cars several 100 km for such pathetic thing as a superspecial, the real rallyfans goes to the stages anyway.
For the money they use for the transport of cars and planetickets for drivers, they could arrange free transport from big towns to the stages instead.

Rallying isnt just about die hard fans, the teams spend a fortune every year, not for the good of the sport but for publicity, surely it makes sense to bring it to the people, try and get new fans etc, there's more sheep than rallyfans in Sligo where the event is based, I think its a brave and good move by the organisers, I hope its a success

[J4MIE]

So, a 250 mile round trip to see a superspecial around the parliament building. Excellent news. Might make it a bit quieter for doing a last minute recce of the proper stages