[WRC] Tet Rally Latvia 2024

Agree with J4MIE. Poor form from just about everyone involved.

The (split-second) decision to floor it was stupid, not an indicator of his superior winning attitude.

Had he stopped he would get notional time as has been common for many years and he knows it.

This way he seemingly also caused the later issue on the final stage. Worst case there could have been something else inside the arch or behind it, either a fan(blower) to keep it up (as there often is in similar constructions) or a fan (person) trying to move it. Even if it "just" got stuck on his windscreen it would get dangerous quite quickly.

Calm down everyone. Tanak had time to break - he did not. Head of organizer told in local TV that there were no visuals from the place due to the plain issue and that there were marchals who tried to remove it and almost did it, but when Tanak came they had to jump off as wires were all around. Note that even power cable was there on the place. This was freakish incident, but clearly all those banners require some rethinking and all the TV signals need immediate back up to move on.

To whoever is claiming it was dangerous to others to go through it, don't you think Tänak would have 110% been warned if it was the case? As we know, nobody warned or waved him down. For a rally driver that is a green light to go forward and make your own decision whether to go through a soft visible object. Am I wrong? And even then, yes, it still looks a bit optimistic and silly to floor it, but whatever, had to decide in a split second, he just took the risk and luckily got the time back anyway.

TET Rally Latvia 2024 in photos - http://janisasaris.com/

JA

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Originally Posted by Päss1928

To whoever is claiming it was dangerous to others to go through it, don't you think Tänak would have 110% been warned if it was the case? As we know, nobody warned or waved him down. For a rally driver that is a green light to go forward and make your own decision whether to go through a soft visible object. Am I wrong? And even then, yes, it still looks a bit optimistic and silly to floor it, but whatever, had to decide in a split second, he just took the risk and luckily got the time back anyway.

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Depends if those trying to move it were able to jump out the way in time or might have been concentrating on moving it too much, or probably expected Tanak to use his brain and stop/go around, you will never know. You can’t go through life thinking everything is fine as long as nobody warns you not to do something as it might hurt someone else….

What if he had destroyed his car? Would look even more of a chump in that case. Very poor form, absolutely no need to risk anything. Press the red button and everything gets sorted out.

I remember something similar happened on the Tour de France a few years ago...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other...tising-8381490

Perhaps not a good food and wine but too busy tracking polish fans. As we all know, polish fans are eating children during rally. And we don't want any children to be hurt.

BTW SS 9/11 3 marshals from 3.79 km to 5.63 km. Three (3) marshals! Not that I'm complaining but I can smell double standards here. In Poland stage won't be started if there were one marshal for 600 m of stage.

My gallery from Rally Latvia 2024 here: https://eu.zonerama.com/TomasR/Album/11801010

I would say not easy rally for "hardcore" fan to get to interesting places. Police told us "only where is green tape"... So sometimes it was hide and seek.
As ToKu mentioned, from marshalls side it was sometimes strange. I experienced one place on SS 11 aprox 2 km from nearest spectator area (marked with green tape) where there were 4 marshals mostly chatting and they told us not to stay inside of the corner on a bank but go to outside near them where the stones flew. On the opposite side, on SS 13/15 there was green tape in forest but no marshalls at all.

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Originally Posted by ToKu

Perhaps not a good food and wine but too busy tracking polish fans. As we all know, polish fans are eating children during rally. And we don't want any children to be hurt.

BTW SS 9/11 3 marshals from 3.79 km to 5.63 km. Three (3) marshals! Not that I'm complaining but I can smell double standards here. In Poland stage won't be started if there were one marshal for 600 m of stage.

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How many stages in Latvia were cancelled due to spectator issues, compared to Poland?

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Originally Posted by ToKu

Not that I'm complaining but I can smell double standards here. In Poland stage won't be started if there were one marshal for 600 m of stage.

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Seems that Latvian Rally had less fans attending than Poland so smaller amount of marshalls was not problematic. Also there is less jump sections where fans caused most problems in Poland.

I prefer Polish stages, especially as after friday, small groups of risky-behaving fans stopped cancelling them but considering chance for Poland to be back are close to zero, I am cool with Latvia.

For future, it would make sense though to focus on area closer to Liepaja and skip those stages closer to Riga that were run on friday - less travelling for fans and generally, more interesting roads.

Does anyone have seen Semenuks roll? Any feedback from him? Internet seems very silent about his adventures on his first Wrc.

https://i.postimg.cc/FFLR9xz2/Sem-t-tulo.jpg

Thanks, this might be the reason why Sesks is not doing Rome this weekend. This is SRTs car.

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Originally Posted by WRCStan

Yes bystanders, marshals, control could have done things.

But it's not such a blind corner.

Is it not unreasonable to expect the driver to either:
i) attempt to slow down and go around the obstruction
ii) attempt to stop despite hitting the obstruction.

Only one person made the decision to put his foot down hoping to blast through to the other side.

:bomb:

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I have you seen onboard of this corner? when you come with that speed from that blind corner (it is lower elevation, crop is also hiding), you have ca 1 second to decide (you cannot break in the middle of corner with that speed, you just go off when doing like this).
With deer incident, he had 0.23 seconds from view to impact, and he managed to push the break pedal already:/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bluuford

I have you seen onboard of this corner? when you come with that speed from that blind corner (it is lower elevation, crop is also hiding), you have ca 1 second to decide (you cannot break in the middle of corner with that speed, you just go off when doing like this).
With deer incident, he had 0.23 seconds from view to impact, and he managed to push the break pedal already:/

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Great points on reactions. I'll take your word he had 1 second before hitting the arch and can react much much quicker. Disagree though that he can't brake between the apex and arch, that is nonsense. But anyway, he accellerated and waited until the arch was causing maximum damage to the car or handling before deciding to stop, there's video evidence of that.

Whether he had time to make the best decision and whether hitting the arch was avoidable was not really my point. What is, is that his own actions show he had no concern about risk or damage. That's important to the conversations that followed, and on the day whenever a camera was near where he deflected attention of all the bad decision making to the 'winos' at HQ who "should have red flagged the stage".