NI will be a year max I reckon. Think plans will be getting put in place for it to be moved elsewhere on the mainland for 2021 onwards
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NI will be a year max I reckon. Think plans will be getting put in place for it to be moved elsewhere on the mainland for 2021 onwards
What a disappointment, this calendar. Turkey, a proper rough gravel rally, gone in favor of Germany. And the season ends with 4/5 tarmac rallies, ending with an unknown rally Japan? Come on... Wales Rally GB should be the final event.
Turkey is the last thing I would miss. AFAIK many crews don't like it as well.
But I agree that the season end shall not be Japan.
Well I for one can’t wait for Rally NZ to be included even though from halfway down the South Island where I live it is 1250km by road to Auckland where the rally will be based plus we have to add in a ferry crossing between the two islands where on a reasonably calm days there is only a three metre swell in Cook Strait. The excitement is building
The nature of the event will be entirely different from what Rally GB has always been. It'll serve a different market to Rally GB. Trivialising the move to NI as just being a issue for fans in Britain not wanting to travel over to NI is a nonsense, particularly on this forum in particular where a good number of us Brits who post here already attend rallies overseas, with those being further away than Northern Ireland...
I believe there is great merit in holding a WRC rally in Northern Ireland. That doesn't mean that we can't lament that it could/has come at the cost of ending one of international rallying's historic fixture's.
I can see it staying there for a few years, before the UK is dropped entirely... If they can manage to get the funding for NI next year, given the prevailing circumstances, then keeping the funding coming going forward should be relatively easier.
I'm getting the feeling that the gradually reduced funding from the Welsh Government is making the Welsh event appear unviable to Motorsport UK going forward. Scotland seems like the strongest theoretical alternative in GB, but is the appetite there to fund a motorsport event that isn't entirely electric in this day and age? If there were supporters of the cause in the Scottish Government already talking up the idea a rally there (like in NI) it might seem possible, but at the moment there seems to be no noise from them at all. So, at the very least, there's a lot of work to be done on Scotland. England? It would seem to me that you'd need a collaboration of too many local/regional authorities on side to even contemplate it being possible to get the event off the ground.
This calendar is i killer for privateers!
I can in a way understand the thinking behind FIAs plan to try to be a pusher of rally to the world.
But lets be realistic, rally as a "large" sport is european. All factories of WRCars, and WRC2 cars are in europe.
The first layer cars produced outside europe is R4 and it is good that local tuners can finally play a part at FIA level.
But I think the expansion policy of FIA is wrong.
The result is that up and coming drivers can not afford anything else than the euro rounds on the calendar. So maybe this will give boost to ERC, as a feeder series to factory seats in WRC.
WRC will loose the privateer figting factory aspect, that has been unique to the world championsip in rally. Too bad.
The rules actually say that WRC teams have to be based in Europe.