speak for yourself.Quote:
Originally Posted by ESTR
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speak for yourself.Quote:
Originally Posted by ESTR
I'd argue that the Abu Dhabi backing is the key to the driver market, especially if it is a clash with Reb Bull or it moves elsewhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by AnttiL
Yes I'm one of them. Just on short. When I was 24 I go on my own and I learn to do everything on my own.. Now one year later I bought myself a house with my money. When novadays most of the guys stay at home for about whole life. Probably dad pay for everything even for rallying career. And poor guys can't even go to work, because they need to be prepared for 4 events in whole year...
That's probably the purest act of bravery I've ever heard.Quote:
Originally Posted by ESTR
retardsQuote:
Originally Posted by Allez Andruet
And so young too :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Allez Andruet
Chill out mate; no need to take it so personally. We all tend to act like Statler and Waldorf now and then; it just becomes annoying if we do it all the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by ESTR
When does FIA decide on the calendar for 2019?
Hyundai Motorsport and Thierry Neuville extend contract for three years
Hyundai Motorsport and current FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) leader Thierry Neuville have signed three-year contract extension up to and including the 2021 season
Probably the least expected signing of them all. Still 3 years is maybe a bit longer than expected, I'd guess 2 years beforehand.
https://rallysportmag.com/detailed-w...onship-190918/
Proposed changes for 2019
- Permanent driver numbers except no1 for champion
- Less mechanics per car on a rally
- Less testing days
- Free testing area diameter from 50 km to 10 km from team hq (bad news for Toyota)
- Car must have four rotating wheels at the start of a stage (remember Meeke in Portugal)
https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/1...019-wrc-return
Toyota wants Meeke for 2019 apparently.
Thinking further, would this mean the end of what Citroen has been doing with rotating their driver numbers, probably to choose who gets the fresh parts?Quote:
Originally Posted by AnttiL
First one. I hate it. I don't have any other words for it as it is literally stupid. It's not circuit racing, where you have a rather fixed number of entrants and most of them don't change for a decade anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by AnttiL
Reduction of testing area diameter. Think it is literally to fight Toyota.
Less mechanics per car. How much do they actually win from that? Or there are mechanics at a rally who do not do anything?
Less personnel working, less parts that can be changed ==> less costs for a teamQuote:
Originally Posted by Franky
Possible more failures -> Higher RD cost for constructing stronger componentsQuote:
Originally Posted by AnttiL
There's no cost saving at the top of any sport.
what ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky
Less testing days means fewer costs, sure, but this combined with the homologation joker system could also mean if your car isn't designed perfectly to start with, it's then hard to catch up. This potentially leads to the danger of a dominant team, or more funds spent on initial R&D.
Totally up for limiting testing (both days and anti-Toyota range, you kind of have to do both limits at same time).
Testing costs a lot with no clear benefit for spectators.
That won't happen though and here is why,Quote:
Originally Posted by AnttiL
The proposal is to allow 9 technicians, in reality this means 9 armbands, not people. The teams who have larger budgets will have fresh technicians and specialists on the sidelines to swap in and out of armbands. They'll put 6 techs on one car if they need to in order to change several components at the same time. It happens now and will continue to happen no matter the restriction. There is no cost savings here.
The reality of what will happen to most teams is the mechanics will be working even harder creating a potential safety issue. This is not the place to attempt to save money, which it won't, as there are other places that cuts could be made.
The funny (or not so funny) thing about this savings is that just one year a go they introduced brand new much more expensive cars.
More muddled thinking - they want to cut costs, but always do it the wrong way.....
how is driver number connected to getting fresh parts?Quote:
Originally Posted by AnttiL
Parts are linked through the numbers. For example Car #11 must use the same engine and differential in Sardegna and Turkey. But if the car retires in Sardegna, it can be fitted with fresh parts. Then the team could choose who drives the car #11 with fresh parts. Also, we could assume that Al-Qassimi's driving pace gives more wear and tear to certain parts so it's a good strategy to rotate his driving number.Quote:
Originally Posted by dnb
Another thing related to this was when Mikkelsen joined Hyundai a year ago, he had to do some rallies with Paddon's differential, which didn't suit his driving style.
Correct me if I'm wrong, please :)
Just when you let down your guard and start to think that the sport is heading in the right direction, the central planners decide that what we really need is more of their goddamn stupid ideas.
Economically illiterate Moseley-era schemes.Quote:
These would be applied on January 1, 2019 and include cost saving measures such as reducing the number of mechanics allowed to work on rally cars from 12 to nine for a three car team, and from eight to six for two car teams. There’s also a plan to reduce the number of test days per year from 55 to 42 [...]
Why? Because some guy with more power than brains arbitrarily decided that all rallies everywhere should be around 300km long? As if the problem right now is too many stages.Quote:
and to reduce the maximum permitted special stage distance from the current 500km (which has never been used) to between 300 and 350km.
Again, straight out of the Mosley school of managed decline. WRONG DIRECTION.Quote:
To restrict tactical retirements at the end of a rally in order to fit a different engine for the next event, there are proposed changes as to when a retirement can take place, and the number of engines which can be sealed and available during a season.
OK, now it's like they're trying to ruin the sport. No, seriously. What are they trying to accomplish with this? What effect do they think it will have on the appeal of the sport to no longer see spectacular scenes of broken cars chugging along?Quote:
Another proposed change, following a dramatic incident in Portugal, is that a car must always have four rotating wheels at the start of a stage, effective immediately.
It's just so frustrating to see this keep happening over and over, and the same people always put their hands up in the end and say, "It's no one's fault the sport is struggling! Young people just don't care about racing anymore." No, you don't care about racing anymore.
Point with the more expensive cars was that they should look more spectacular (power+wings) and they added center diff so that they are "safer". Whether they succeeded and whether it was worth the cost is one thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
Number of test days has no direct positive effect for spectators (well unless you count those few people that get to the test and then spend most of the time waiting for that 1 car to appear), which is why it is different.
Well, testing= development, speed, equal competition idealistically so should have a positive effect.
Exactly. Teams will spend every last bit of money they can get their hands on. If they have money left they will hire an extra engineer to design more aerodynamic rear view mirrors, or to design a lighter battery bracket.Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky
If they really want to cut costs, they need to shorten the rally's. Shakedown on friday, perhaps some special stage at night too. And a full saturday, sunday and the night between. Thats saves money to everyone.
What exactly would save so much money? 50 less SS km?
One or two days worth of hospitality. That might be a small cost for the factory teams, but its a big cost for everybody else who has to stick to a budget.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarmop
What's the point of having rally's last 4 or 5 days if they can easily do the same km's in 2 days.
Well, less rally2 finishers probably, places where distances between stages and service are long would also suffer.
One or two days of hospitality? How much do you think hotels cost vs, say, shipping a race car to an international event and back?Quote:
Originally Posted by denkimi
But I agree that they could do the current stage mileage in two days. The FIA just doesn't allow it, because it's the FIA.
Exactly! Most of the Sunday mileage is so small they could do it on a Saturday night - in fact I wonder why they haven't allowed some events to do this to see if it works. A Saturday evening Power stage could work on some events.....Quote:
Originally Posted by sonnybobiche
But, they straitjacket all events to finish Sunday lunch time, so don't allow it.
When was the centre diff control ever about being "safe"? I thought their argument was that it gives more freedom to adapt car behaviour to different drivers preference.Quote:
Originally Posted by mknight
We will still see cars chugging along the stages when they have been broken during it. Three-wheelin' on liaison has been banned for a decade. Now the difference is just that you can't start a stage with three wheels. What Meeke did in Portugal was change in a tyre with only a wheel, no rubber, to save the deflating tyre to go through the liaison to service. This kind of trickery won't be allowed anymore.Quote:
Originally Posted by sonnybobiche
Show me a rally which has taken advantage of the 500 km limit and not just going near the minimum 300 km? Although, Monte, Mexico and some others have been between 350 to 400 km in the latest years, but it won't be much of a shortening for them still. And Monte does not have to obey any rules anyway :DQuote:
Originally Posted by sonnybobiche
I think it was banned 2-3 years ago at most.Quote:
Three-wheelin' on liaison has been banned for a decade.
And that's a good thing, why?Quote:
What Meeke did in Portugal was change in a tyre with only a wheel, no rubber, to save the deflating tyre to go through the liaison to service. This kind of trickery won't be allowed anymore.
So again, why did they feel the need to pass a new regulation to make it impossible to have more than 350 km?Quote:
Show me a rally which has taken advantage of the 500 km limit and not just going near the minimum 300 km? Although, Monte, Mexico and some others have been between 350 to 400 km in the latest years, but it won't be much of a shortening for them still. And Monte does not have to obey any rules anyway
I know why. It's because they wanted to have a justification for when they bring back "Safari" and it's only 300 km long. "Oh yeah, we wanted to make it really long like the old safari, but these rules that we just passed forbid it, so it's going to have to be 300km going in circles on private land. Sooooooorry. ;)"
Time flies. http://juwra.com/rules_2007.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by sonnybobiche
Quote:
A small but important clarification is presented: during liaison (ie. road) sections, competing car must have all of it's four wheels intact. No more three-wheeling on public roads.
Like it was ever going to be like the old Safari... Wake up.Quote:
Originally Posted by sonnybobiche
A 500 km Safari would have still been a tenth of the Safari of the 80's.
Very second-hand-information as I only read this on another forum, but apparently a person associated with FIA has spoken today at the Finnish Rally Championship event radio broadcast that FIA is planning some sort of "virtual chicanes" for WRC, where the drivers need to slow down to 40 km/h on a certain area or something of the kind. If it's true, it's just...I don't have words to describe...