Should the WRC take things back to basics?

[N.O.T]

again i have to lecture you people in case you learn something... which i doubt but here it goes.

Back in the 80s the only way you could watch WRC was up close, maybe some tv shows every now and then and then from VHS and books... and that was also the reason why you considered the drivers and carsof that era that good... the limited amount of information lead you to glorify them.

In general the less you know about something and the less you come into contact with it, the more you want it, and visa versa when you have something every day you get bored of it, and as one of my close friends said to his model-looks girlfriend when she asked him why he does not want her any more the way he used to "well dear even if you have steak every day you grow out of it eventually"... have you seen a vase full of flowers fly at almost the speed of light ?? well he did that day....

nowadays you can have WRC through Youtube, facebooks, instagrams, all those social media for antisocial people and the interwebs and on top of that before each event you have DimViii to post 5 pictures per second of what each driver does so in your peasant eyes these drivers become humans like you... they are not characters anymore, the cars sound awful and the feet of malcom wilson smell.

Plus the new way of life demands evolution and change very often and far faster than in the 80s... you gave Mr jobs cancer because he could not cope with the evolution demands of the ipad and you should be sad about it... so people prefer the antics of ken block who is yet to get a chin transplant... and on top of that you have me who rants about everything and you cannot have nice things because i will probably tell you the truth about it and you will be sad again...

Plus you are getting old... really old... in a few years you are going to hate the youth of today and the technologies of today... because back in the 80s you were the youngster and everything was nice and the sunsets were brighter and your wife resembled a woman rather than a person of unknown sex and identity... and you maybe have kids and you have to worry about their problems more than yours and in general you preffered when you were free and young and you actually looked yourself in the mirror and said "damn i look good"

so "back then" will always be nicer because you were nicer...

lecture is over... class dismissed.

[janvanvurpa]

No, it's not the way of life. I think it was the technology revolution called Quattro & Group B. But that's not all, in 90's we had Sainz, Kankkunen, McRae & Makinen, which were all great drivers but also great characters. May be that's also missing nowadays. Probably the last great character in wrc I remember is Gronholm.

So it is right. We are in different era now, and sadly I don't see how wrc is going to be more popular.

The thing that was different is what is called "identification"....

Previously people--adult males primarily---could 'identify" with or 'relate to' the humans driving the cars...

The 80s and 90s saw primarily American universities vomited forth whole armies of "media specialists' and "web developers" not selling products but selling "image"....there was one stupid California based company selling some useless junk to little California boys and their motto was 'Image is Everything'

So to sell to the mindless, and like it or not most of what in "the trade" over here is called "The Target Demographic" are brainless little 14 to 24 year old boys in the affluent suburbs, it was necessary to more or less simply grab any pretty face with maybe normal talent---and above all YOUNG---and pump out endless videos and now facebook, tweet and all the rest of the throw away "media" and results or experience be damned, just have breathless "vidiographers" keep saying "Awesome" and "rad" and the litter boys will bug Mommy and daddy to give them money so they can run out and buy the latest flat brim cap, and gallons of Red Monster Bullsh*t ENERGY DRINK --cause it is thirsty work playing the latest F1 or Dubya Arsey game in the air-conditioned house.

And as the media worked its "magic" and anybody with a pulse in any backward bankrupt country could have access to a keyboard, the "media producers' could tally their you-tube "hits" and say The sport is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Popular, 5 million views"

So the sport has become a completely packaged commodity, a consumer product as a "spectacle"......and the people and the skills and the variety of formats and events become as bad as that unbelievable bore fest F1. Same format, same schedule, same cars---Oh wow the headlights on the Siesta (snore) are swoopier than the Citra... is what we are supposed to discuss...

Advertising has ruined everything it touches, because the people doing it are mere whores who will say anything, write anything, present anything....and it matters not that they know nothing...In an avalanch of Bullsh*t, who is going to notice some huge stinking turds of misinformation...

Example: in America we have around 315,000,000 people...Last year there were about 320 individual entrants in any rally in USA...it is a shrinking sport...Last US "National" Championship had 13 entries..One stock Honda 1500, a Fiesta and the rest Subarus--or maybe 1 Misterbitchy..
The driver skill level is far below even district level competition in say Sweden...in other words there are guys in Sweden in Golf and 20+ year old volvos quicker on same stages as "full time Pro" who easily runs away from evertybody else here...
A backwater. Not even "big fish in a small pond', more like minnow in a mud puddle.

Has that stopped the American media from pouring out endless Press releases about "the American Rally Gods"?

Here I have read in Press releases such gems as: Travis Pastrana was the 2007 World Champion--direct from "Wasserman Group" , a high powered "Media Management" firm in (where else?) Los Angeles ... Back in the late 90s I read in some "well respected" magazine that "Subaru was the first car in the WRC with turbo and AWD"

And we all know that "ben Klock was a factory driver full time highly paid Professional in the WRC"...which must have been news to Malcolm Wilson and maybe he wondered why Ben Clock was giving him 4,8 million GBP.

When advertising is the main point, reality is doomed.

And advertising is king in all motorsports now---except a few islands of sanity at the "District" level or what I think may be the best series in the world, F-cup in Finland...

[janvanvurpa]

again i have to lecture you people in case you learn something... which i doubt but here it goes.

Boring time in the lab?

Must you ruin every thread?

Back in the 80s the only way you could watch WRC was up close, maybe some tv shows every now and then and then from VHS and books... and that was also the reason why you considered the drivers and cars of that era that good... the limited amount of information lead you to glorify them.

We have limited information about you other than you are a lab assistant and an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur ...
It does not make anybody here glorify you...

DING!
Point proven invalid be simple ordinary test in just 2 seconds.

In general the less you know about something and the less you come into contact with it, the more you want it,

Again we know very little about you, no real contact and what contact there is seems excessive, and again I will bet a whole nickel that nobody here wants more of your lecturing...or more of you.

Again simple test and your construct collapses.

lecture is over... class dismissed.

if we are lucky the lecturer will leave now. ..

One can always hope

[the sniper]

Personally for me anyway, Audi, BMW, Subaru and Mitsibushi coming in would make little difference. An odd bunch of posers cars vs heavy, oversized Japanese saloons holds no special attraction. As much as Group B was great, it's hard to see how you could recreate those cars. Time has moved on, technology has moved forward. Engineering the past isn't a step forward in my view. For the same reasons I wouldn't like to see manual boxes return, the industry has moved on. Seeing the current cars out on the stages, I don't personally think there's much wrong with them.

I think there's a mixture of issues in the WRC, non of which are easy to solve. I think the biggest issue with connecting with the wider public is still the TV coverage and promotion of the Championship. The TV deals still aren't that good, the WRC is largely invisible if you aren't looking for it. Broadcasts are cheap 'world feed' style affairs in many countries, lacking local presenters, in vision and on location. It just makes the WRC seem unimportant. If these packaged highlights were better it wouldn't be such a problem, but even as a massive fan, I find the highlights shows highly formulaic, completely lacklustre and rather boring. When you watch the old ISC highlights from the early 2000s now they seem to have a much better flow to them, a better way of telling the story of the rally. Red Bull's highlights are a mixture of repeating what we've already seen, a few shots from the stages, a crash, plenty of Super Slow-Mo's, a bit of dubstep, a teaser for a crash that's coming up after a break, then after the break all that repeated again. There's too much fluff and too much stop/start, interrupting the 'story' of the event. Maybe that sounds like wishy-washy nonsense, but essentially the ISC highlights were better!

A major bugbear of mine with the WRC today is the nature of the events. Most rallies are just sad shadows of what they used to be. Take Britain for example, the RAC was a massive event touring the country, it made an impact on the nation, there was a buzz about it. While Wales Rally GB is much better now than it was for many years, it'll never have the impact that the RAC had. When you look at the itineraries for even late 80s/early 90s RAC rallies, you can't help but be impressed by what the competitors had to undertake. Damn, even the BRC rallies up until the late 90s were more impressive than the modern day Rally GB. Today's WRC rallies across the world just look pitiful, three or four stages in the morning (at most), the same stages repeated in the afternoon for two days, then a couple of stages on a Sunday. All done within the normal working day, often covering much less than 400km competitively, going round and round in circles... It's just so uninspiring in comparison with what's gone before. I appreciate that it's much cheaper and easier to do rallies like this, and as a spectator on the stages it is convenient, but being easy and convenient isn't what the spirit of rallying was traditional about! The death of the Safari Rally still lingers over the Championship for me. The WRC freed itself of its greatest challenge, it's last flavour of what rallying was. While F1 still has Monaco, Sports Cars still have Le Mans, Indy Car the Indy 500, NASCAR the Daytona 500, the WRC, I would argue, just has... a load of similar events on different surfaces, with some less mediocre than others.

And finally, the Seb effect. The one man show. Loeb and Ogier are great drivers, but their domination has undoubtedly damaged the sport, particularly outside of us core fanbase. They've frankly made the rest of the guys look like amateurs. That's not to say they are, but if a Loeb or Ogier had turned up in the mid 80s or late 90s and dominated, would we still consider the likes of Sainz, Kankkunen, McRae, Burns, Makinen et al. to be the heroes that we do today? Having one man be dominant makes it hard to make heroes out of the rest. Worst of all, Loeb leaving to bugger about in the WTCC robbed the WRC of the only 'battle of greats' that we could have seen in the short to medium term. The buzz that we saw during the Monte stretched over the length of a few seasons would have help the WRC regain some traction, frankly it'd be great. Maybe Jari-Matti would be able to make a better shot of it if he didn't have the weight of the world's Seb beating hopes on his shoulders...

I think I've rather strayed from the OPs point though!

[b3637853]

I think there's a mixture of issues in the WRC, non of which are easy to solve. I think the biggest issue with connecting with the wider public is still the TV coverage and promotion of the Championship. The TV deals still aren't that good, the WRC is largely invisible if you aren't looking for it. Broadcasts are cheap 'world feed' style affairs in many countries, lacking local presenters, in vision and on location. It just makes the WRC seem unimportant. If these packaged highlights were better it wouldn't be such a problem, but even as a massive fan, I find the highlights shows highly formulaic, completely lacklustre and rather boring. When you watch the old ISC highlights from the early 2000s now they seem to have a much better flow to them, a better way of telling the story of the rally. Red Bull's highlights are a mixture of repeating what we've already seen, a few shots from the stages, a crash, plenty of Super Slow-Mo's, a bit of dubstep, a teaser for a crash that's coming up after a break, then after the break all that repeated again. There's too much fluff and too much stop/start, interrupting the 'story' of the event. Maybe that sounds like wishy-washy nonsense, but essentially the ISC highlights were better!

This. I watched all coverage from the past 2+3 years and there is something boring in every day highlights, preview magazines and event higlights. And it is boring even for an enthusiastic WRC fan. I mean it lacks something extra. Like few years ago at Rally of Turkey they explained with details Loeb's, Hirvonen's and Block's pacentotes. They could show how driver prepares for an event or use the gps virtual cars comparison like Canal+ did at the last Rallye de France. Finally the onboard camera position showing the struggle of drivers or footwork. Of course the producers need to make extra effort, but they can't just film few slow-mo shots mix it with some onboard footage and that's it.

Other thing is WRC+ onboards. As I remember they've started WRC+ in Finland 2014, but soon the onboards from Rally Poland were available and it was great because they've all had intercom sound recorded. That allows you to redo the rally with any crew listening to pacenotes, their corrections by driver, what they were saying in difficult moments and after every stage. This should be done for every rally. And of course the onboard camera position.
Secondly obviously the Seb effect, but I think it is a consequence of lack of competition. Not enough factory teams. WRC needs strong rivalry between big manufacturers not a quasi-team M-Sport and almost withdrawing Citroen.

[AL14]

Back in the 80s the only way you could watch WRC was up close, maybe some tv shows every now and then and then from VHS and books... and that was also the reason why you considered the drivers and carsof that era that good... the limited amount of information lead you to glorify them.

In general the less you know about something and the less you come into contact with it, the more you want it, and visa versa when you have something every day you get bored of it.

This is wrong. The exposure we have through various channels nowadays don't affect live events. According to you Chelsea should have his big stadium almost empty and bruce springsteen should sing in suburbs pubs. The new communication era give people the possibility to watch more contents but at the same time engage them more...

[Mirek]

Another suggestion I would have for the FIA would be to take the cars back to basics. Rallying used to be about driver skill controlling the machine, but now with fancy computers in the cars, it is more like the car is controlling the driver. I would like to see the FIA do away with the likes of sequential transmissions and bring back the standard manual gearboxes for the rally cars. Okay, so maybe gear changes are slightly slower, but with the driver having to use the clutch and a gear stick for every shift (instead of using paddles and driving the cars essentially as an automatic) it brings back real or 'pure' driving. Essentially, I'm looking back to the golden age of group B rallying, even though it was banned. I think that taking inspiration from those Group B cars, with their minimal driver aids and standard manual transmissions would do no harm for the sport, especially with today's new safety standards.
I would be happy if rallying simply went back to it being the car and the driver, rather than software running everything!

I suppose You are not a technician, right? No offense there just please take a short while read my next few lines. I'm no expert at all but I'm sure dimviii or br21 would fix any mistakes I do.

There is basically nothing driver-related driven by software in todays WRC cars. There is much less of software in them than in Your stock car, not speaking about WRC cars from 2000'.

Let's just take it step by step.

Engine - ECU needs software. Yes, it's been like that with every combustion engine for decades now. Possibly the only special thing about WRC ECU is anti-lag. In the past the 2.0 cars had fancy things like water injection or intercooler water spray but that's all gone for simplification.

Gearbox - there is nothing hi-tech about sequential gearbox. It's at least quarter a century old technology now. The hydraulic system which is used is very simple. Unlike in the 2.0 WRC cars it's not used for driving active differentials anymore. Only gear shifting and handbrake last. Believe it or not it's primitive technology.

Transmission - this is my favorite part as the fully mechanical 4WD system without center differential is something so terribly 80' style that it hurts to be presented as any cutting-edge technology

Suspension - although dampers are way better than in the past they are still purely mechanical. No active systems are involved.

Brakes - same as above.

Traction - there are no traction control systems used. No other drive-supporting systems at all. Again current WRC are like two decades back behind stock cars.

Tyres - big difference from the past as a result of natural development.

Auxiliary systems - here You can find some fancy little things like non-full time driving of the water pump or alternator to save engine power but these have virtually nothing to do with drivers.

All in all WRC cars of today are simplified near to the bone. In my opinion they actually prove two things:

- from marketing point of view it's doesn't matter what is inside the cars

- from cost point of view it doesn't matter how much You simplify the cars (for manufacturers at least)

[AL14]

All problems we've argued would be easily solved with money. During '80s manufacturers had funds to invest in rallys, that meant more manufacturers and therefore more competition (and not one Sebastien ruling the scene).

With more money the national federations will be more able to go to talented not-rich-daddy's guys and give them the opportunity to become great drivers -> again, more competitiveness, a better sport.

With more competitiveness thanks to more money, and more money's opportunities for businesses in the WRC there will be more TV coverage. So we will have a bigger awareness of the sport and people will go back to the stages making rallys like Wales be amazing as they used to be.
WRC+ would be purchased by more people and will be a better service -> it will make WRC earn more money for promotion, promotion will enhance the success of the sport.

Profit and capitalism rule our world, if we don't want advertising ruin motorsport and such things we should not let people demolish that wall in Berlin back in 1989

To finish: do not misunderstand me, I'm aware money are not the only issue but we can say they are the bigger one. Way more than a gearshift.

[stefanvv]

All in all WRC cars of today are simplified near to the bone. In my opinion they actually prove three things:

- from marketing point of view it's doesn't matter what is inside the cars

- from cost point of view it doesn't matter how much You simplify the cars (for manufacturers at least)

- from durability point of view, the simpler, the better.

[Sladden]

This new formula of World rally cars since 2011 was supposed to go back to basics. But now the paddle shifters are coming back again. And Another thing is that 20 years ago...300bhp car was something quite special. Not supercar even then but still. In 2015 we have standard cars that almost match this. Its not that special anymore. On top of this tyres, suspension and transmissions and other technology has evolved so much. How about making cars appear a bit more beastlike and have Power matching the development that has happened since 300bhp became norm?