There is a brand new personal interview today on rallyssimo.it by Alex Alessandrini with Andrea Adamo. I am certainly not going to translate it all, but those 3 questions and answers are truly a wake up call:
After three races, hybrid technology is under siege, plagued by reliability problems and more. At his time you had expressed some doubts about the transition to this technology, especially with respect to the times of realization and the car models that the market can offer for the next three / four years. Saying it today is perhaps easy but, what was the case to take some more time? Was it necessary to do this because the market is asking for that? What do you think?
"Look, I am still convinced today, after seeing the race in Portugal as a retiree going to see a road construction site instead of a WRC race, that this regulation was a mistake. I am convinced that today's cars should have been Rally2, with a bigger restrictor, perhaps a more eye-catching wing and rear bumper. Potentially there would have been more manufacturers today, there would certainly be more customers ready to race with these cars, there would probably be more interesting races because with cars that cost less, the panorama of competitive drivers who can race is widened.
Today we have very sophisticated machines at an electronic level but, with limitations in terms of suspension, engine and much more that lead me to wonder if it was really necessary to focus on machines like this. The transmission concept, with all due respect, is that of an R5: five-speed sequential lever operated gears without center differential. Then we can tell all the sophistication we want. The engine is an engine that has a huge cost where the ALS system (ed. Anti Lag System) is the same as the Rally2, since you can't have “Fresh Air” as it once was.
In a current moment where there is no money, I believe that making spaceships, because this is what it is, with certain extreme sophistications and with incredible costs like the hybrid system does not make much sense. Especially for a system that is used to move the cars to service in full electric mode and to have, between yes and no, additional power in the special stage, but the drivers declare that they detach it because it is easier for them to drive.
I wonder if we did the right thing and I take my share of the blame for having these cars here, because I was there too, despite having fought against it until the majority prevailed. We have no new manufacturers and we don't know if we will have any soon."
Yet the drivers themselves speak of rallies as the essence of motorsport and the images prove it. Yet we are no longer able to intrigue someone to wake up early in the morning, pack a backpack and go on trial.
"I would never do this again because we are in 2022 and we must remember that the 80s have passed for forty years. I keep saying it. It is useless that we continue to want to convince people that the past is beautiful. The past is over.
Let us ask ourselves: how do we bring to people what we have today with the tools we have today?
I take the liberty of saying one thing and I say: those of F1, who will be ugly, bad and unpleasant in the eyes of those of rallies, however, since Liberty Media arrived, he said "well gentlemen, now we do because we are continuing to talk to each other. us and to be self-referential ". And it is the same mistake we are making as we keep talking about rallies. All nice but outside the rallies nobody gives a damn, so you have to take someone who comes from outside who knows how to do real communication and says that now it is done like this.
F1 started using social media, Youtube, Netflix and all these things it does and, magic magic, now it goes to America. Because? Because they presented F1 in a different way than the stereotypical one that has been going on for years and today they like the same product. Then they made cars that know how to be more spectacular with less suffering in the wake thanks to studies paid for by the promoter. Not the FIA. Liberty Media invested some money, hired people, to do some studies and take it to a higher level of showmanship.
We keep talking, wondering how to do the best rallies with people who have been in rallies for 50 years and they keep telling each other that rallies are good. Okay, let's carry on but the guy across the street hasn't the faintest idea who these people are.
We make real reports, meetings with the drivers as it should be. Truly spectacular and well-known montages. People get passionate and go to see them and see them again. In Formula 1 you have your Coca Cola, lounges, sponsors and everything becomes a show. In rallies we take people far away to eat the dust and they don't give a damn."
Yet attempts like Ypres and Monza didn't go all that well, did they? Didn't they show something different than what rallies are?
"It was full. People care and whoever pays the ticket saves the race, but what really matters is the all-round visibility. Those who bring the money are the sponsors, the ones who pay for the TV rights. World F1 teams also get money based on TV rights, World Rally teams also pay for the air they breathe. Explain to me how a new manufacturer is attracted to a sport where: there is no visibility, he has spectators on the side of the road and maybe with an exit you kill someone, I have hospitality for sponsors but I often don't use them because the cars they go out in the morning and come back in the evening.
What show do I do in the service park? What's in there? Is there anyone who has raised the problem? No, there is All Live. They will write it on the plaque the day the rallies die: "but they had All Live"
https://www.rallyssimo.it/2022/05/28...-andrea-adamo/
