The solution to the WRC

[Doon]

For me the WRC has become less marketable or attractive to prospective manufacturers because of the domination of a single team/driver. With Loeb gone, the WRC could be dominated by Ogier/VW (on an even larger scale!) until 2019, or even longer.

For a die hard fan, it becomes a little uninteresting when you know that Ogier will win pretty much every rally. We are half way through the season and would anyone bet against Ogier from taking title number 2? It was the same in 2013. VW obviously have a far superior car, the drivers will propbably finish 1-2-3 in the final standings. Is there a solution to this? The only fair way I can think of budget caps for the teams.

The fact its the sport would be more popular if the results were unpredictable. This will never happen if one team dominate, no matter how much you promote the show, or how many live stages, final day shootouts, or pit stops there are.

[havk]

I agree with rjbetty that bringing back pre-2004 rules could help, although IMO Pluto is right that there are plenty of other factors that caused WRC is no so much attractive. I started interesting in WRC in 1997, and agree that 2001-2003 was really amazing, probably best time for WRC.

I also very much dislike Super Rally. If I remember correctly it was 2005 when Super Rally drivers started being classified in the final results of the rally and I lost much of my interest in WRC because of this. I never liked ideas that turn sport into a show. And SR is probably one of the reason that there is so little private WRC drivers.

The problem is that FIA is looking for solution in some strange way (shoot out) rather than bring back eurosport TV coverage. Lack of good promotion is IMO main problem.

[Mirek]

I think that everybody on this forum already know that I hate superally so I won't write another wall of text which anyway everybody hates to read

Just one point... Superally removed the goal of finishing the event.

[Rallyper]

g) global warming and the whole change of marketing, where cars have to be green, eco-friendly etc. Rallying doesn't fit in their marketing strategy anymore as it did more years ago.
h) FIA took too long before replacing the 2L cars. Almost nobody was still making production 2L cars in the category of cars suitable for making a WRC of.

g) There´s a pedagocical thing to explain the need of rallying making production cars better for average Joe. None of this we´ve seen.

[Eli]

http://www.rallye-magazin.de/rallyes...l#.U7qqLZSSyUY

[tommeke_B]

g) There´s a pedagocical thing to explain the need of rallying making production cars better for average Joe. None of this we´ve seen.

Rallying making production cars better? It was the case in the past yes. Thanks to FIA's unsuccessful attempts to reduce the running cost, nowadays WRC cars are packed with 20-year old technology, apart from the dampers...

[rjbetty]

Just one point... Superally removed the goal of finishing the event.

Totally agree with this. Back around 2005 or so, I used to keep the main results in a spreadsheet not having much access to the web then. I hated superrally so much I didn´t count the drivers who had used it in my results!!

I also agree it stuffs privateer drivers over, as they ought to earn the right to points having kept it going to the end. I didn´t mind in 2004 when superrally was trialled where drivers who had retired could still run, thus pleasing the fans, but they weren´t included in the final results.

I wouldn't mind a compromise where it would return to drivers not being included, but maybe they could still be included for manufacturer (team these days?) points, thus giving drivers an incentive to push.


EDIT: Also, a huge problem for me is that like F1, top WRC cars are ultra-reliable these days compared to 10yrs+ ago. This has heavily contributed to the lack of different winners. I mean between 2006-present I think all rally wins have been divided between just 5 drivers:
Loeb, Gronholm, Hirvonen, Latvala and Ogier - with the exceptions of Mads Ostberg in Portugal 2012 and Dani Sordo in Germany 2013.

Compare that with 2001-2003 alone where rally winners included;

Tommi Makinen
Harri Rovanpera
Didier Auriol
Colin Mcrae
Marcus Gronholm
Richard Burns
Jésus Puras
Gilles Panizzi
Carlos Sainz
Sébastien Loeb
Petter Solberg
and Markko Martin


I'd say ultra-reliability just as in F1 is ruining the variety. What I've also particularly been unhappy about is that smaller works teams and privateers haven't been able to score points due to top drivers benefitting from superrally, thus stopping them creating an impression, and killing their careers.

Matthew Wilson suffered a lot of flak but I'm sure he would have got at least 1 podium somewhere. Others like Antony Warmbold suffered as well, as I know he was pushed out of the points several times by superrallying drivers in better cars, such as Monte-Carlo 2005.

[AndyRAC]

Rallying making production cars better? It was the case in the past yes. Thanks to FIA's unsuccessful attempts to reduce the running cost, nowadays WRC cars are packed with 20-year old technology, apart from the dampers...

Old technology, not much good for the Manufacturers, is it? If you were in charge of a car Manufacturer's Motorsport programme would you really enter the WRC? I'm not sure I would....

[Mirek]

Carmakers take it as a marketing tool. I don't think they really care if there is some engineering challenge. The people who decides the involvement are economists and marketing specialists not engineers. They simply want to defeat their rivals on the market in something what is as much visible on public as possible.

[Rallyper]

Carmakers take it as a marketing tool. I don't think they really care if there is some engineering challenge. The people who decides the involvement are economists and marketing specialists not engineers. They simply want to defeat their rivals on the market in something what is as much visible on public as possible.

Agree, but marketing people just love to have messages like "this car has been tested in hardest condistions etz..." and also I do believe some good things still comes out to production cars from rallying. Dampers was mentioned. Yes. Good example.