[WRC] News & rumours (part II)

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Originally Posted by MTA

Swedish Rally will not pay the fee to the promotor.
3.7 mil sek /year for 3 years contract is to much so possible no Swedish Rally in WRC after 2014.

Shuldent things be better whit the new promotor? What have we seen so far?

Stor risk att Svenska rallyt hoppar av VM - nwt.se - Ditt Värmland, just nu!

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I bet Eurosport Events is happy, imagine an ERC with R5 the top class and having events with history like Sweden and Acropolis and the other who cant afford RedBull Media House money to be in their club. An ERC with no clashes to WTCC with affordable cars and good tv and web coverage would be very attractive to talented drivers who could find it easier to get sponsorship money to have a decent attempt at ERC.

I t makes me wonder what events get out of being in WRC now? I don't see that RBMH have done fantastic things to the sport, in fact I think the WRC we had before DR /ISC was better. Bye bye WRC in a few years, I enjoyed my time.... now moving on.

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Originally Posted by MJW

I bet Eurosport Events is happy, imagine an ERC with R5 the top class and having events with history like Sweden and Acropolis and the other who cant afford RedBull Media House money to be in their club. An ERC with no clashes to WTCC with affordable cars and good tv and web coverage would be very attractive to talented drivers who could find it easier to get sponsorship money to have a decent attempt at ERC.

I t makes me wonder what events get out of being in WRC now? I don't see that RBMH have done fantastic things to the sport, in fact I think the WRC we had before DR /ISC was better. Bye bye WRC in a few years, I enjoyed my time.... now moving on.

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Coverage has improved, at least certainly on the web. All daily programs are available at wrc.com after each rally, we get onboards during the rally itself on the YouTube channel and they show stage highlights on YT as well.

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Originally Posted by MJW

I bet Eurosport Events is happy, imagine an ERC with R5 the top class and having events with history like Sweden and Acropolis and the other who cant afford RedBull Media House money to be in their club. An ERC with no clashes to WTCC with affordable cars and good tv and web coverage would be very attractive to talented drivers who could find it easier to get sponsorship money to have a decent attempt at ERC.

I t makes me wonder what events get out of being in WRC now? I don't see that RBMH have done fantastic things to the sport, in fact I think the WRC we had before DR /ISC was better. Bye bye WRC in a few years, I enjoyed my time.... now moving on.

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No think about it - the WRC was better before DR/ ISC got hold of it. All it needed were a few tweaks.......

I still love the sport - but find Sportscars far more interesting at the moment - no plans to turn the great 12/ 24 Hour races into 2-3 hours to make them popular.

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Khalid F Al Qassimi ‏@khalidbinfaisal 18m Chances may come & go, yet Kris deserves them - that's how he'll grow. @krismeeke to you and all your fans I'm thinking of another chance.

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Interesting poetry, to say the least. Hopefully we'll see Meeke in another event too this year.

What with Neuville getting Qatar support, now Abu D backing for kris I'm thinking the delayed 2014 announcement could be something to do with a possible ME round

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Originally Posted by Mirek

Already since fifteen years a go everybody is selling cars which are safer, more fuel efficient, more ecologic than his opponents. These values which drive the mass car market are not going well along with motorsport spirit. In my opinion this trend is irreversible and the value of motorsport will further decrease.

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Not if motorsport will follow the current eco-trend in the automotive industry. We already see smaller engines in the WRC and rally cars have downsized (from Focus to Fiesta and so on). Perhaps it is time to introduce a consumption limit for each crew per rally ? Sure it won't be the fastest driver who wins a rally, but the one who drives as fast as possible in a fuel-efficient way. It may sound a sacrilege for every rally purist, of which we have plenty on this forum, but it might safeguard the future and the very purpose of motorsport.

We already see in F1 that often it is not the fastest car & driver that is winning, but the car & driver combination that is managing tire wear better than others. Maybe it is time to see something like that in the WRC with cars & drivers using a limited amount of fuel as efficient as possible. A consumption cap may hurry the introduction of hybrid electric cars like the Citroën C4 WRC HYmotion4 concept from a few years ago, that was supposed to use electric power only on liaison and road sections, while still using its 300 bhp petrol engine on special stages. And the auto industry will largely benefit from the development of these systems in this great lab called motorsport.

Jourdan Serderidis to contest almost the whole WRC next year in a Fiesta R5 with Erwin Mombaerts?

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Originally Posted by Mihai

Not if motorsport will follow the current eco-trend in the automotive industry. We already see smaller engines in the WRC and rally cars have downsized (from Focus to Fiesta and so on). Perhaps it is time to introduce a consumption limit for each crew per rally ? Sure it won't be the fastest driver who wins a rally, but the one who drives as fast as possible in a fuel-efficient way. It may sound a sacrilege for every rally purist, of which we have plenty on this forum, but it might safeguard the future and the very purpose of motorsport.

We already see in F1 that often it is not the fastest car & driver that is winning, but the car & driver combination that is managing tire wear better than others. Maybe it is time to see something like that in the WRC with cars & drivers using a limited amount of fuel as efficient as possible. A consumption cap may hurry the introduction of hybrid electric cars like the Citroën C4 WRC HYmotion4 concept from a few years ago, that was supposed to use electric power only on liaison and road sections, while still using its 300 bhp petrol engine on special stages. And the auto industry will largely benefit from the development of these systems in this great lab called motorsport.

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Sorry, but for me this is no way to go. I'll try to explain my stance.

Motorsport in any way is not ecologic. Even with hybrid cars it is not ecologic because going from point A to point B as fast as possible can never be done in an ecologic way. Speed and ecology are contradicting each other. Not speaking about the fact that any drive just for the sake of driving ruins the spirit of ecologic thinking right from the beginning.

For me it's pointless to speak about ecology with motorsport. You can ban anti-lag and immediately You have 1/3 lower consumption and ruin the spectacle but why? To say hey, our car now consumes only 60 liters per 100 kilometers, see how we are ecologic? Seriously, WTF? You can make a big hype about that in the media of course but realistically what You achieved is a car with 10x consumption of normal stock car. Calling that ecologic is a pure hypocrisy.

My point about public stance was also meant different way than You interpreted that. I mean that if people turn to more fuel efficient, safer and more ecologic thinking they naturally loose interest in racing. Will You buy a Prius because Toyota wins WRC? Hardly. There's so much irrelevance in such connection that one wonders what can a car maker of that kind gain in motorsport.

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Originally Posted by Mihai

Maybe it is time to see something like that in the WRC with cars & drivers using a limited amount of fuel as efficient as possible.

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Would you like it when you go to a stage to watch your heroes fighting for victory at maximum attack, only to see a bunch of people going in cruise mode to preserve fuel? Like Mirek said, motorsport cannot be associated with ecology and the whole green-transport ideas.
Motorsport should be used as a marketing tool to show the sportiness of the cars, reliability etc and not that they offer low fuel consumption as the manufacturers' show room car. Even saying that F1 is more eco-friendly because of the introduction of KERS and fuel capacity limit is hypocrisy, considering how much fuel they use in less than 2 hours. Motorsport should be kept a spectacle primarily and not compromise the show by such rules.

You are being a true rally purist hardliner. :D Your conclusions are based on the premise that 'motorsport cannot be ecologic' which is quite questionable. Just like car makers and race tuners can extract now more bhp from a 1.4 litre engine, the same way they can extract more miles from 1 litre of fuel. It's not a question of ecologic, but a question of being more fuel efficient.

And yes, I do believe that an eco-freak customer, encouraged by EU tax subsidies for low-emission/low-consumption cars, will buy a Prius from his local showroom if Toyota is winning the World Rally Championship with a stock-based hybrid Prius WRC. For that, the FIA must shift is focus from naked performance to emphasize on fuel efficiency.

If a hybrid Prius WRC is more efficient than a hybrid Honda Accord WRC on Sunday's race finish, then Toyota will sell more Priuses on Monday. You just need to introduce one more vital variable in the equation: consumption. If fuel consumption is on regular car customers' minds, then it should be on race engineers' minds, so that the WRC won't lose it's fan base. And for that, the FIA would need to introduce a consumption limit for crews per rally, that could be lowered every 3 or 4 years.