Which rally should they add to the WRC-calendar?

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Originally Posted by trickydicky

And you think having an event on Sardegna purely as a marketing tool for a Qatari owned holiday resort is preferable to having an event in one of rally's classic locations close to a whole shed load of fans? How utterly depressing, which department of the FIA do you work in?

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Go home dude and study Sardinia's rally-history and heritage!

These roads have been defined like "rally-university"! Particularly, Tergu-Osilo stage has been much appreciated by Gronholm, Sainz, Loeb, Rovanpera, Schwartz, etc... they all - with their respective teams, during their development runs - learned lots of things they then adopted in WRC events all around the world.

Mainly, Costa Smeralda roads have been, years ago, one of the toughest and challenging gravel roads of the European Rally Championship until 1994, facing fresh and innovative stages year-after-year also to champions like Markku Alen, Didier Auriol, Juha "KKK" Kankkunen and Henri Toivonen.

So, please show some respect to one of the wildest and toughest gravel events in Europe and WRC, yet in 2013.

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Originally Posted by Motorsportfun

Go home dude and study Sardinia's rally-history and heritage!

These roads have been defined like "rally-university"! Particularly, Tergu-Osilo stage has been much appreciated by Gronholm, Sainz, Loeb, Rovanpera, Schwartz, etc... they all - with their respective teams, during their development runs - learned lots of things they then adopted in WRC events all around the world.

Mainly, Costa Smeralda roads have been, years ago, one of the toughest and challenging gravel roads of the European Rally Championship until 1994, facing fresh and innovative stages year-after-year also to champions like Markku Alen, Didier Auriol, Juha "KKK" Kankkunen and Henri Toivonen.

So, please show some respect to one of the wildest and toughest gravel events in Europe and WRC, yet in 2013.

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Agree, best event on gravel in Europe to spectate.

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Originally Posted by Prisoner Monkeys

It's already expensive enough to run a rally as it is, and now you want to saddle the organisers with an extra financial brden?

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If all these other events want to be part of WRC, why not make them pay to the benefit of the competitors?

It's the way it works in all other forms of world championship motorsport. Hell, it's the way it works in the ERC - except the money goes to Eurosport, rather than the competitors!!

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Originally Posted by rallyfiend

If all these other events want to be part of WRC, why not make them pay to the benefit of the competitors?

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Because you'll be the first one to complain when the likes of Rally GB - which relies on government funding - are removed from the calendar becase they cannot afford the additional costs. It's all well and good to say that the events should pay the competitors if they want to be a part of the championship, but the problem is that most of these events are operating on a tight budget and the astronomical price rise will likely kill many of the events.

@Prisoner Monkeys: Isn't it a shame that events like Mexico have only 25 crews? The logistic costs for European WRC events are not so big compared to the overseas events... All in all, even without the boat trip, those events are still more expensive for the teams as the cost of transport of all crews is multiple times that of a European event. Cars/parts/tools/service park tents etc are away from the workshop for a much longer time, I can imagine that teams have to buy many things which they would normally not need. There was some article, maybe on irally, about recce-cars. Richard Millener (M-Sport) was explaining how it all works. He said they have extra recce cars which are used for the events outside Europe only, they are shipped from Mexico to Argentina, from Argentina to Australia, if I'm not mistaken. I remember that an event like Islas Canarias (ERC) paid for the boat-transport of teams. Maybe it would be a good thing if the organizers from those (far away) events pay for the boat trip, not only for the big teams, but especially for privateers it would make a difference.

First of all someone (FIA?) needs to define the rules under which rally calendar is made up. Is it purely money, location, size of the country, teams decision, spectator wishlist or number of spectators on stages? Anything that would give an idea, at the moment I have no clue what and why is going on. I have seen many rallies and I like some more that others but there some that I have no idea why they are in calendar for various reasons. At the same time there are great rallies with huge media and spectators interest that has been once or never in WRC.
Besides that WRC should be more balanced sport-wise with more winter rallies.

Does anyone of any driver opinions on the calendar? After all, their the ones that have to put on "the show". I know Mikko is in favour of endurance type events. (Probably because he is not fast enough to win the modern day form of a rally and hence believes he could keep his car on the road for long enough)

All three Baltic countries could be added as one event for WRC :)

I seem to recall that idea being floated before, with a rally starting in Vilnius and travelling overland to Tallinn (or the other way around).

But I don't think it would work. I'm pretty sure there are rules that dictate that a certain number of stages must be run twice over the course of the rally, and such a rule would be counter-productive to a rally from one city to another.

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Originally Posted by Prisoner Monkeys

I seem to recall that idea being floated before, with a rally starting in Vilnius and travelling overland to Tallinn (or the other way around).

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In Estonia it wouldn't even go that much into north. Most likely would be in Southern Estonian stages. But yeah, that long endurance rally idea disappeared quite fast.