The beginning of the end........from WRC!

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Sorry, I wasn't saying that you were giving that view. I was agreeing with you.

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Sorry, didn't understood your point of view.

But you wrote one thing, if the manufacturers don't have success they go out. If you look at F1 that's not the situation, they are there over the years even without succes, and it proves that a champioship well promoted is always atracting even without winnings. In WRC you had the same situation with Hyunday, Seat and Skoda. If the WRC had more visibility at that time, probbably Seat and Skoda would stayed even without winning.

The problem with WRC is that it has lost its soul, it's not special anymore. WRC has become sprinting. The sprint has taken over too much, the endurance has become much smaller over the years. The idea behind WRC and what made it great in the past was not just the car, but the sense of adventure, the nightstages etc. That's what made the drivers real heroes, and each rally a true event. There is no sense of adventure anymore, that's what WRC need. Toyota used to mention their individual rallywins in adds in the early nineties. Don't see that happening now.
Also the cars are not that special anymore. Late group 4, group B, now these were cars, looked like road-going cars, but were much faster than anything on the road, except the most expensive sportscars.
Group A made the cars available to a wider public, how cool was it to drive in a WRcar?
WRCcars then, 300bhp around 1200kg, hhmmmm, no big deal in this time when road-going cars' power-output have increasingly gone up. Ok a WRCcar is a tremendous piece of technology, but that doesn't say anything for most people.
WRCcars have become too technical. It's very hard for a driver to make a real difference. Just look at the situation now, Marcus of Sebastien wins depending on who has the best tyres, the best set-up etc. It's all about the car, make a mistake in that area, and you can forget it.
S2000 a good idea? For a while, but in the manufacturers quest for advantage these will quickly become equally if not more expensive than WRC.

And the exposure of WRC is indeed far to less, it's aired on incredible times if at all. And always different timeslots. Nobody but the true fans is going to watch that.

That Subaru documentary on Discovery Channel now that's brilliant. You get all these people that watch discovery channel see the WRC in action, now that's exposure. But the whole ISC experiment has failed miserably.

I criticize, the WRC for what it has become, the FIA needs to do something, but they should have done a long time ago.

Wow, this thread details each and every thought I have had about the WRC in my entire life.

I love rallying to bits, but I find it depressing that the highest level of the sport I love is so damn boring.

The comments on returning to the 90's era are spot on IMO.
I feel that the WRC should take a leave out of the IRC's book and provide a control transmission system that can be used if desired or the manufacturer can develop one using its own design process.
Other components like struts, engine, rear spoiler etc. should all have a control option available. This would make it easier for new manufactures to build a car on the cheap without the need for overwealming testing to get up to speed.
Technology should be limited to Group N levels with the exception for limited modification in suspension geometry, engine and brake packages. There should be a choice of either a 2000cc Turbo (34mm restictor) or ~2500cc NA engine (possibily no restrictor and limited to say 11k) so manufacures can acually benifit from and R and D they do.
Technology like active diff's, water injection, in-cabin adjustable suspension height (aka Ford) should be banned.

The main thing the FIA should bring in is budget restrictions.
Teams should be aloud to spend up to X dollars/pounds/euro's/whatever and that has to pay for absolutly everything. Drivers, testing, cars, worldwide transport... the lot. So team A may have a triple world champ (Loab for example) but would also have to use a significant portion of their budget to pay him while sacrificing expenditure in other areas.

I guess in my opinion that if the cars are made to be more a one make affair with the exception of alterations desired from the manufactures, then we would have a competitive series that is worth watching.

There is an article in Autosport (may 10th) stating there is an important FIA meeting scheduled for tuesday15th may. It is expected that the future of wrc will be debated, meeting to be called Vision 2012 group, presumably because they expect the changes to come into forece in 2012, they are more optimistic than me if they think the current format can cling on until then! Feature was a bit confusing but it is widely thought that 4wd will stay - engines probably dropped to 1800cc turbo with pop off valves - or even 1600cc turbo to reduce torque. Here is the difficult bit - it is expected that WRC cars will be based on existing Group n or s2000 cars that the manufacturers has. Also cars can be tuned up from thi slevel to wrc spec, and then tuned down again by removing various "kit parts" to revert to national or regional championship spec. On the event front it could drop the clover leaf single service park that we all have come to appreciate and love over the past few years........

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Originally Posted by grugsticles

The main thing the FIA should bring in is budget restrictions.
Teams should be aloud to spend up to X dollars/pounds/euro's/whatever and that has to pay for absolutly everything. Drivers, testing, cars, worldwide transport... the lot. So team A may have a triple world champ (Loab for example) but would also have to use a significant portion of their budget to pay him while sacrificing expenditure in other areas.

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I almost agree. I think the budget should be the maximum same for every manufacturer, but leaving out the driver's salary. It would help enough settle things if every manufacturer had the same financial resources to build up, set up and test a car. One Loeb here or there won't make the difference ;) Just kidding. But drivers should be left out of it. An army doesn't need one man if it will do things right.

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Originally Posted by MJW

There is an article in Autosport (may 10th) stating there is an important FIA meeting scheduled for tuesday15th may. It is expected that the future of wrc will be debated, meeting to be called Vision 2012 group, presumably because they expect the changes to come into forece in 2012, they are more optimistic than me if they think the current format can cling on until then! Feature was a bit confusing but it is widely thought that 4wd will stay - engines probably dropped to 1800cc turbo with pop off valves - or even 1600cc turbo to reduce torque. Here is the difficult bit - it is expected that WRC cars will be based on existing Group n or s2000 cars that the manufacturers has. Also cars can be tuned up from thi slevel to wrc spec, and then tuned down again by removing various "kit parts" to revert to national or regional championship spec. On the event front it could drop the clover leaf single service park that we all have come to appreciate and love over the past few years........

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I'm worried. FIA is planning something about engines... as if the problema of WRC was there! That's why we are as we are. For FIA the problemas are not where they really are.

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Originally Posted by MJW

There is an article in Autosport (may 10th) stating there is an important FIA meeting scheduled for tuesday15th may. It is expected that the future of wrc will be debated, meeting to be called Vision 2012 group, presumably because they expect the changes to come into forece in 2012, they are more optimistic than me if they think the current format can cling on until then! Feature was a bit confusing but it is widely thought that 4wd will stay - engines probably dropped to 1800cc turbo with pop off valves - or even 1600cc turbo to reduce torque. Here is the difficult bit - it is expected that WRC cars will be based on existing Group n or s2000 cars that the manufacturers has. Also cars can be tuned up from thi slevel to wrc spec, and then tuned down again by removing various "kit parts" to revert to national or regional championship spec. On the event front it could drop the clover leaf single service park that we all have come to appreciate and love over the past few years........

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Interesting.
I say leave the basic format of the engines alone though. 2litre Turbo is fine IMO.
"Kit parts" care to elaborate as to what type of parts that may be? Tranmision components? wheels? aero kits?

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Originally Posted by A.F.F.

I almost agree. I think the budget should be the maximum same for every manufacturer, but leaving out the driver's salary. It would help enough settle things if every manufacturer had the same financial resources to build up, set up and test a car. One Loeb here or there won't make the difference ;) Just kidding. But drivers should be left out of it. An army doesn't need one man if it will do things right.

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I guess... I was just trying to come up with a way of narrowing the gap between people like Seb and Marcus to others such as Henning and Gigi. Lets see them on the podium!

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Originally Posted by grugsticles

I guess... I was just trying to come up with a way of narrowing the gap between people like Seb and Marcus to others such as Henning and Gigi. Lets see them on the podium!

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Don't take me wrong, in principle the idea you gave is brilliant. It just shouldn't consern the drivers because they should have the right for equal machinery despite how good they are. I don't think Loeb should be punished for being the best :)

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Originally Posted by grugsticles

I feel that the WRC should take a leave out of the IRC's book and provide a control transmission system that can be used if desired or the manufacturer can develop one using its own design process.
Other components like struts, engine, rear spoiler etc. should all have a control option available. This would make it easier for new manufactures to build a car on the cheap without the need for overwealming testing to get up to speed.

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Huh? How would such concept work? If control component is crap, it would not offer any advantages to new manufacturers and if it would be good, there would be no reason for anyone to design their own. In addition, rally car is not a combination of random bolt-on components.

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Originally Posted by grugsticles

The main thing the FIA should bring in is budget restrictions.

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And how exactly you propose this to be enforced? There are a million ways to circumvent budget caps and none to gap those holes. Rule one of rule making is to make only enforceable rules, otherwise you end up with dead-letter rules.

More on vision 2012, wrc cars, format and so on:

FIA's Fifteen Crucial Rally Issues

President of the FIA's World Rally Championship Commission (WRCC) Morrie Chandler was present in Rally Norway, and gave an insight into the status quo on world championship issues.

http://www.rallynorway.com/en/news/f...ialissues.html