Jänner Rally 2016 cancelled

[PLuto]

Mirek, I dont think rallys from the national calendar are a good indication of historics popularity. Safety and scruteneering are so tight nowadays that most drivers just dont want to risk it. In the so called pirate races I'd say more than 50% are historics, atleast here. There has been also a huge boom on regularity rally with the historic cars, get a blunik and a full fuel tank and you're set to go.

Historics were growing up also on international level on previous year, but it is stopped now and level is not so perfect. It is because they have allowed more modern cars - group B like Lancia 037 Rally and now also first modern cars of group A...

[Mekola]

Well, back to topic. It's a real shame that Jänner rally will be cancelled for 2016. That rally spiced up the first days of January every year, along the South-American Dakar and the Africa ECO Race...

[RS]

Not true at all.

There was a bunch of WRC2 cars in the Live TV programmes - both SS1 and the first run of Fafe. Hence why we were able to see Ketomaa have his accident etc.. Live on WRC has got to be far more valuable than Live on Eurosport...

Unless I missed it they didn't show the WRC2 crews on the Sardinia power stage despite three of them being in the top 10.

[WUff1]

Jänner Rallye organizers have no financial problems, except for 2013 when it was heavy rain and much fewer spectators. But they close their budget now solidly even with some money left.

ERC-Top Ten field was not so bad in the last years, especially form 2013 onwards (as already written by Mirek), but big problem was nearly complete crashing down of production car field - because of missing CZ-starters on the one hand (not being part of CZ-Championship anymore) and also lack of national starters on the other hand, which can be seen in other rallies of Austrian Championship too. In Austria most Mitsubishi/Subaru-drivers now only start at sprint rallies, whereas in championshop rallies it´s now just Baumschlager (and some very few other occasional starters with fast cars like Kreim at some rallies this year) followed by R3/R2 cars on the Podium.

On the other hand there was big media bashing of Jänner rallye this year because of separate results ERC <-> national class, only caused by Baumschlager´s start just in national field - something which never is a problem where national rallies are running in combination with ERC, like e.g. Azores.

Everyone knows the date was not very good, which would have been another big problem in 2016, but in earlier years when Jänner Rallye was part of the old European Championship nobody was really moaning about this. But times are much more stressy in these days, so it ís understandable that teams are more focused about celebrating Christmas Holidays.

Even at Monte there are less starters than elsewhere, many drivers enter WRC/2/3 later at Portugal.

Let´s see if there will be a "sprint"-Jänner Rallye in 2017, which was proposed by some drivers, and if new rules in Austria get through, could then also be part of Austrian Championship again.

[PLuto]

Everyone knows the date was not very good, which would have been another big problem in 2016, but in earlier years when Jänner Rallye was part of the old European Championship nobody was really moaning about this. But times are much more stressy in these days, so it ís understandable that teams are more focused about celebrating Christmas Holidays.

Before entering into Eurosport ERC, Janner was not real competitor in ERC, nobody was taking interest about this event and crews were deciding to start there because of snow conditions (I am talking about modern history, not prehistoric times...

[WUff1]

I was talking about the Eighties, before the first end of the rally in 1986, when European championship was not very important, similar to European rally throphy today, where as I think also Barum was a part of it (?) in these times.