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Jari-Matti Latvala crashed on SS1 of the EHRC Storico Costa Smeralda today:
"Unfortunately the rally ended early for us in the first stage when we lost the car over a fast crest.
Thankfully me and Topi Luhtinen are both totally fine and we will get the Celica repaired and be back on the stages again soon !"
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HGrOP0AW...jpg&name=small
Did FIA kill EHRC? Look at that - this year they didived it into 2 separate series:
1) EHRC Pre-1992 - where Latvala will probably lead from start to finish:
https://ewrc-results.com/event/98291...results/535195
2) EHRC Pre-2000 - where Delecour leads from start to finish:
https://ewrc-results.com/event/98279...results/541023
That what both championships share is poor entries in both series.
What a dumb move. The championship finally growing and they did this.
There is limited number of competitors. When there was one championship and lets say 8 events, lot of them did plenty of events. With dividing into three championship and having 14 (or more?) events doesnt mean there will be much more competitors. It will be plus minus same crews, so entry list will be much poorer everywhere. And having Costa Smeralda for older cars and Vltava for younger cars in same weekend is really brave. On Vltava there were only 4 EHRC competitors! On the other hand, all four of them finished the rally, so this must be historic record of historic rally championship - 100 % of cars finished the rally...
Until JML came along the whole ERC Historic scene appeared to be a safe haven for "gentlemen" drivers and the reason it seems to me for the FIA to go down the route of splitting the championship up is to allow more drivers to win cups. At a push could see a tarmac series that may just favour the 2 litre kits cars and Porsches and a gravel series for the Group A 4wd era machinery.
Sorry, that is not the reason. For a very long time there was not classification in general, only by categories (periods). This drivers are still receiving their cups and points according to age of their car. It is not about JML or other drivers, but about interest of too many organisers to be part of the championship. And of course they expect that drivers with modern cars will be much faster, so they wanted to allow drivers with older cars to fight for some championship. But the way how they did it is not good. You need to concentrate drivers doing EHRC on few events, not to have plenty of EHRC events with only few competitors. It is same like it was not working in ERC many years ago with 40 events and coefficient system...Quote:
Originally Posted by Sal yet again
No I get all that and obviously didnt make my original point very well, what I meant was when a well known "high profile" name with WRC credentials decided to do a full season to win a title which he hadnt done elsewhere suddenly the championship became a thing in its own right rather just something that die hard rally fans knew about. No-one wants to go back to coefficients...Quote:
Originally Posted by PLuto
It's not brave. It's stupid.Quote:
Originally Posted by PLuto