What is currently best - WRC or IRC

[DonJippo]

IRC is asphalt one.

Is not.

[N.O.T]

well out of 10 events 4 are only the gravel ones and from those china and russia are skipped by the majority of competitors whoi aim for the title so it may not be 100% asphalt but definately if you are tarmac orientaed you have bigger chances to win the title.

[RS]

well out of 10 events 4 are only the gravel ones and from those china and russia are skipped by the majority of competitors whoi aim for the title so it may not be 100% asphalt but definately if you are tarmac orientaed you have bigger chances to win the title.

At least that is a better split than PWRC's calendar.

[jso1985]

Why did Finns started to b**t IRC right from the begining? Do they think rallying belongs to them and everything in rally has to evolve around them?
Rallying is a sport with too many different aspects, everyone is free to enjoy the parts he likes most. IRC may not be better, but it's different and it has its audience. I hope we can agree at least on that one.

IRC is not worse or better, as it cannot be considered a true competition or alternative to WRC.
while compared to other more similar series, it is better than PWRC or JRC IMO

[jparker]

jso1985 23:16 18th Jul 08
IRC is not worse or better, as it cannot be considered a true competition or alternative to WRC.

Why's that?
What's your definition of "true competition"?
As a matter of fact, I hardly see any competition in WRC. PWRC maybe, but not WRC.

[Wim_Impreza]

Wim, you're right. It's not 'right' to compare Gronholm with Loix, Gronholm has got very much WRC wins and even the championship. But in terms of speed, would he be much faster than Loix (1sec/km like one stated here?) and apart from Loix, so much faster than the other IRC boys? I still don't think so and I still hope one day the fast men of WRC and IRC will meet in the same type of cars on the same rally, I think that would be a great rally.
(Was Panizzi so much faster than the other IRC boys last year, in a car he helped developing, he was the WRC asphalt specialist, wasn't he?)

It's so easy to say, the drivers in IRC are just the slower WRC's ones who didn't made it (like Loix and Kopecky) to the top. But 'speed' is not the only thing that makes or brakes career.

And IF the WRC drivers are so much faster then the IRC drivers, so wath? If the the rallies are exciting and the drivers are fighting for seconds, I think it is great already.

On asphalt, I think Grönholm is much faster than Loix, too. Don't forget that Grönholm his tarmac speed is not bad. Probably not 1 sec/km on tarmac on a normal tarmac rally and for sure not in a rally like Ypres. Panizzi was last year not top in Sanremo, but Loix was also struggling in that rally. And yes, he was the tarmac specialist in WRC. My opinion is that Kopecký has not had a real chance in WRC. I think and hope we will see him back in WRC in 2010 with the Škoda Fabia Super 2000.

[Sulland]

For me as a spectator IRC is for the moment much more fun to follow live. It is much closer btw the cars/teams and can change much more from stage to stage.

WRC has too few that can fight for victories last couple of years. That has to change somehow to pass IRC again !

[jso1985]

Why's that?
What's your definition of "true competition"?
As a matter of fact, I hardly see any competition in WRC. PWRC maybe, but not WRC.

I'm not saying there's no competition inside the IRC.

what I meant is that taking count the characteristics of the category, IRC cannot be considered an alternative to WRC but being actually a really good feeder series(or lesser series if you want to take it like that)

[HaCo]

Here a quote of Luca Rosetti after rally of Portugak '08, that answers the topic:

“The IRC, however, is
fantastic. Here in Portugal
you could honestly say any
one of 12 drivers could win –
now wouldn’t the World Rally
Championship like to be the
same!

“Okay, maybe we are not on
the same level as the Loebs
and the Gronholms of this
world, but there are so many
drivers all of whom are on a
comparable level, and that
makes for great rallying!”

From GPWeek: http://www.gpweek.com/PDF/GP010.pdf

[bluuford]

I just came from South-Estonian rally. I must say that I have not seen such a competition in IRC or in WRC like I have seen in last two Estonian rallies. Well, Aava of course won that rally by a mile in front of Rautenbach but in group N the time difference between first and 10th driver was only one minute! Well it grew a little longer on the last long stage but it was still so close that third place was decided according to the results of the first stage :-) http://www.rally.ee/?a=a009&b=6597
So, to have a nice competition you need to have many competitors. to have many competitors you need many rally fans to open the interest of sponsors. and to have many rally fans you need to create something spectacle for them. I think that very interesting is one project which collects all kind of video footages from the spectators and compiles a really nice overview of the rally. So, You can get very good idea about how different drivers drive in different conditions. So, you can see how one driver has driven captured by about 10-20 different cameraman+moments at the end of video. So, here is the link of those overview videos. If you watch it you can get better idea about what I am trying to tell you: http://www.rallyvideos.net/videod/videogalerii_est.html
The first video is about previous rally.
So, what I am thinking about is that there should be also some kind of central service that captures all the nice moments not only those few that are captured by a few official cameras.