Return of Rough Rallies - Are the Cars Ready?

[the sniper]

The question is :"Are drivers ready?" not "Are the cars ready?"

Exactly!

But what is the point, when there`s no car left in the end?

Why are you speaking hypothetically when we've just seen that wasn't the case? To me the results in Turkey showed that there was a pace at which that rally could be driven to ensure a good chance of finishing and securing a good result. Of course there is still a risk of bad luck, but that is the case on any rally and those who seemed to mitigate against taking risks made it to the end. People are talking like Turkey was a lottery, but look at the result... Three of the top four competitors for the JWRC were the top three going into the final day, Ken Torn seemingly went off due to a mistake, with the championship leader and most experienced participant winning the class and the Championship. Was that luck? RC2, won by Henning, the most experienced R5 competitor, focused on driving to the conditions and won the category by a country mile with few dramas. Was that luck? The overall classification, won by the guy who many of us believe is a Champion in waiting, followed by JML, the most experienced guy in RC1, followed by Paddon, who said he was driving to get to the finish from the start. Okay, the Toyota wouldn't have seemingly had the pace to go flat out at the pace of Ogier and Neuville, but they were pushing hard and look where it got them...

And all the time talking about reducing costs, then make teams spend more money for one or two events.
Then we have R5-s. Same story, except they are built for profit and mostly sold to privateers in national championships also, where there is no need for such a tough car. It is too expensive and many can`t afford it now, so developing it to these kind of events would probably mean that a customer needing it for smooth gravel and tarmac events would pay for that development, resulting in another dead circle.

The vast majority of the non-works/semi-works R5s entrants in RC2 in Turkey were made up of entrants from Turkey, Cyprus and Greece (with the addition of Henning who beat the works cars with virtually no problems in a private Skoda). I would imagine these kind of rough conditions are the norm for those guys, they know what they're getting into. If we're talking Safari, it'd be the same, most non-works entrants would be from local guys used to those conditions doing the Kenyan and African Championships. Nobody is forcing anyone with an R5 to enter Rally Turkey or a future Safari, so why are you concerned? It's not like it's necessary for WRC2.

In my opinion this is not normal:

Yet, he won his classification and the Championship with few issues!!!

Come on guys, next you'll be setting up a 'save the rally car' foundation and a sanctuary for retired cars!