Quote Originally Posted by JUF View Post
Exactly. It's rather ironic to leave Poland for security reasons and move to a country where people are imprisoned without any reason...
Security reasons for dropping Poland is only a pretext (or rather the symptom of the underlying root cause) - the real reason is money (as usual).
The money WRC promoter demands from WRC event organizers is significant. Polish Automobile and Motorcycle Federation (PZM) is too poor to afford it (in my opinion it is also heavily incompetent and inefficient in bringing sponsors to remedy the lack of money).

The result is cost saving - unfortunately PZM tries to cut the costs by impacting security. Blaming spectators in Poland is a bullsh*t - event organizers' responsibility is to make sure that it controls thousands of people (including these who don't know how to behave during special stage). It is true that Rally Poland organizer failed miserably on that front. And FIA doesn't help blaming spectators and not the organizer - PZM feels good after such FIA statement and probably won't do anything to improve.

There are issues with spectators on every rally - sometimes even with fatal results (Monte). I can show you a number of pictures and videos with spectators in very dangerous places during Rally Deutschland (plus police car on a SS route). But nobody says that these rallies should be removed from the calendar. Clear example of hypocrisy and double standards.

And Turkey? They just paid the money WRC promoter wanted - so they are in the calendar. Political prisoners? Who cares when the budget is balanced...