Rally Portugal 2016

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Originally Posted by stefanvv

This is the place where the other drivers should complain. I'm not defending Ogier, just the sport as such.

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thats not a solution, to complain each driver for their advantage.

There is hell of a discussion about the current rules but how come nobody ever made so much noise about the old system used also in the national and some regional championships where it's up to the organizer to create the starting list? Even current WRC rules are more fair than that as they are strictly given with no place for personal preferences of the organization but such system has been used for decades with nobody so loudly complaining. It was a privilege to wear the No.1 even though it meant to sweep the road. Simply it always were that way that the best has had to prove he is worth the number he wears.

And as was said - there is also asphalt in the championship or events with standing dust. It's not like being first is always the worst what can happen to You. Also driving first means something from the audience recognition - it has always meant that the one who opens the rally is the one who everybody cheers for and looks forward to. It used to have a marketing meaning itself.

The QS continues in the ERC and there are no such issues/complaints...

The current WRC start order was purely brought in as an unofficial 'handicap' to give the lower placed drivers a better chance.

Plus it seems that Ogier isnt that bothered in terms of the Title.. he knows he will still win overall... its that he isnt able to win as many individual rallies and so improve his record in that respect...

They should just do a simple draw for d1 and 2 and reversed 15 on d3.

As far as I know every other form of motor sport has some sort of pre-race qualifying....

Like marathon rallies which are the closest to classic rallying in their fundamentals?

I personally dislike quali stage. It should be either championship order or rally standings. QS is like pulling the shortest straws.

Like it has been said over and over. Someone will always be disadvantaged. Be a man.

I agree with Franky. IMHO The most fair one is the 2014 one where championship order on day one and rally order on other days. I just saw in Twitter that Paddon also recommends this.

And nowadays radiocommunication isn´t an issue either. Makes it more proper to do championshiporder only D1.
One more thing, the dribbling with tyres. Organizer should decide which tyres shall be used, so no fuzzing about that either, should be best rules.

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Originally Posted by Lundefaret

My suspicion is that the main reason for this is Ogiers character. For him it isn't enough to win the championship, he wants to beat every record ever set, to be the greatest of all time (and we all know what that means), and he sees that this will be impossible if these rules continue, and I would suspect that he has even threatened to quit rallying all together if this does not change, and I suspect Ogiers tuntrums after Portugal lead Capito to have to react, to show Ogier that he stands 100% behind him.

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I think this hits the nail on the head. Basically you can talk about records before and after Loeb. Before if you won more than 3 rallies in a season you were hot stuff and the top drivers had around 25 wins. Loeb completely rewrote the record books. Now Ogier wants to emulate that and while he will win another title, he will not get 10 wins in a season so that's why he is complaining. All his career he has compared himself to Loeb and for him, so far, Loeb has been the only real rival.

Now regardless of Ogier, road order rules have kept changing back and forth so much I can't even remember all of them. The one we have now initially seems the most unbalanced but in fact it makes for the best show. It disadvantages the championship leader on some rallies so potentially tightens the championship and it sets up day 3 for potential come-backs from first couple of drivers who have been disadvantaged by sweeping. The running order also makes sense to the fans on the first days and then creates a nice crescendo for the TV Power Stage.

So yeah that's how I see it, I think the system is not so bad for the WRC. It's only bad for Ogier beating Loeb's records. Maybe others like Meeke and Paddon will start to challenge him so he can have something else to focus on than Loeb.

In reality you will never have a perfect system, as others have pointed out the difference between dry gravel, wet gravel, dusty gravel, snowy tarmac, dry tarmac, wet tarmac is so wide no system will ever be "fair". But rally is not about "fair" it's about adapting to the conditions and extracting the best result you can, it's about unpredictable things and it's about being able to put together a full season and win the title.