[WRC] News & rumours (part II)

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Originally Posted by Kielder

More information about the absurdity: World Rally Championship in radical power stage decider proposal - WRC news - AUTOSPORT.com

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Good grief. This sport is in bigger trouble than I thought. Every rally is now a sprint event, with less stage miles than ever before - 14 stages in Argentina, 7 of which are repeats? The WRC is becoming a parody of its former self. The sport desperately needs change, but the exact opposite of the kind of proposals we are seeing. If we keep going like this, the WRC will be dead within a couple of years; it is most certainly on life support right now, and these kind of ideas are just another nail in the coffin.

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Originally Posted by RAS007

Every rally is now a sprint event, with less stage miles than ever before - 14 stages in Argentina, 7 of which are repeats? The WRC is becoming a parody of its former self.

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Don't be so quick to judge. The Rally Argentina might have had just fourteen stages, but it was still run over 400km. The Ascochinga-Agua de Oro stage in particular was over 50km long, while Santa Rosa-Villa del Dique was 40km long and Amboy-Yacanto fell just short of 40km (by about 800m). That's by no means a sprint. If anything, Argentina has the kind of stages the sport should be pushing for.

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Originally Posted by Prisoner Monkeys

Don't be so quick to judge. The Rally Argentina might have had just fourteen stages, but it was still run over 400km. The Ascochinga-Agua de Oro stage in particular was over 50km long, while Santa Rosa-Villa del Dique was 40km long and Amboy-Yacanto fell just short of 40km (by about 800m). That's by no means a sprint. If anything, Argentina has the kind of stages the sport should be pushing for.

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Really? In the mid 1980's, Argentina was almost 1,200kms, that's 3 times longer than it is today. In the mid 90's, it was 600kms. If you think 400kms (actually 200kms run twice) isn't a sprint, then you have a very different idea of what rallying is than I do, but I think that has already been established. I'm out.

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Originally Posted by Mirek

That's what I find strange. Prior this season Mr. Ribeiro from Eurosport clearly said in autosport.cz interview that RedBull offered better package then Eurosport could afford but so far we have not seen anything special from RedBull media house regarding WRC.

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Does Eurosport 'invest' in Live though?

I thought they only did Live when the Event Organiser was willing to spend the cash?

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Originally Posted by noel157

Currently it's electro-pneumatic then. Wonder why it has to be complicated? What was wrong with an old-fashioned hydraulic handbrake? Like in the 70s and 80s.
Maybe I'm missing something.....

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Handbrake is operated normal - like in every other rally car. So hydraulic, additional pump connected to lever which builds pressure in brake system and blocks rear wheels.
The other thing is how power is "cut" from rear wheels when handbrake is used. As there is no center diff when you pull the handbrake without pressing the clutch all 4 wheels lock... so they made special system which disconnects power from rear wheels when handbrake is pulled. Usually it's hydraulically operated, but like VWs case shows it might be pneumatic or electro pneumatic...

Baltic biggest rally team ASRT planning to buy two R5 cars. And one of the fastest Baltic rally drivers Alexy Lukyanuk (ASRT team) next season probable will drive full ERC season.

Redbull is not the company that will give us nice tv coverage. On eurosport ERC is much much better.

i think that redbull is not very interested to put more effort in it. The viewers on tv is not enough for them. They rather give money to a guy which jumps of the moon in a parachute. So that every average joe sits for the tv following it. All they want is to sell the to expensive energy drink to the masses. Wrc coverage is not big enough for them to spend more money on.

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Originally Posted by rallyfiend

Does Eurosport 'invest' in Live though?

I thought they only did Live when the Event Organiser was willing to spend the cash?

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My comment was about WRC promoter. If they offered to FIA considerably better package than Eurosport (that's what Eurosport admits) where is the result? For me the coverage of WRC this year is hardly any better than ERC. In the end for us it doesn't matter who pays the coverage but if there is some at all. Acores had live stages, Corsica will have them too. Nothing like that in WRC so where is the considerably better package?

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Originally Posted by Mirek

My comment was about WRC promoter. If they offered to FIA considerably better package than Eurosport (that's what Eurosport admits) where is the result? For me the coverage of WRC this year is hardly any better than ERC. In the end for us it doesn't matter who pays the coverage but if there is some at all. Acores had live stages, Corsica will have them too. Nothing like that in WRC so where is the considerably better package?

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For this year, fair comment.

But one would assume that under the proposal to be discussed at the Commission (the new Power Stage) that the WRC Promoter is proposing to cover the last stage of each event live for TV - as NOS did in 2011.

Has Eurosport ever proposed such wide-ranging coverage off their own bat (as opposed to only doing it when organisers paid)?

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Originally Posted by rallyfiend

For this year, fair comment.

But one would assume that under the proposal to be discussed at the Commission (the new Power Stage) that the WRC Promoter is proposing to cover the last stage of each event live for TV - as NOS did in 2011.

Has Eurosport ever proposed such wide-ranging coverage off their own bat (as opposed to only doing it when organisers paid)?

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But so far RedBull has no intention to do that either. They want to force a major change in order to commit showing live coverage. So, if this is the price to pay to have live coverage it is better not to have it at all or better to have Eurosport kind of coverage in selected events and where the organisers are happy to pay for it.

The better package that Eurosport has already mentioned is probably associated with fees paid directly to the FIA and not the whole 'package' of how they will approach promoting WRC. Also it may worth considering that Eurosport probably would wanted to have its own people involved in the WRC, where RedBull use the majority (or maybe everyone that was involved with NOS, and that's why we do not see any kind of improvement in the 7-8 months that they were announced as the promoters. The only thing they have done is to include a section in their website for WRC under 'Off-road' (go figure out how relevant these people are with rallying) and just updated the video section of wrc.com. And now they propose these ridiculous changes... Sorry but Eurosport would be able to do much more for us, and FIA once again betray the sport probably in favour of money.