Quote Originally Posted by meverkko
As you said. Some true, some not. I think Zamppa got exactly what I meant.

Average speed.......

Two cars start at the same line, the first drives at 240km/h for lets say 10 minutes, then slows down to 60km/h and continues.

The other car starts at the same time, driving a steady 120km/h.

At some point these two cars meet again, at that point they both have the average speed of 120km/h .
Were these two drivers driving at the same safety level because their average speed is the same?

No, you don´t need to answer, I think I know...

Average speed has some correlation with safety, but you need to know how and why you end up with a certain number. Was it because there was a lot of really slow corners between the straights, was it because there were shikanes in the middle of a straight or was it because there was a number of fast curves and only a few long straights. Ok, with Ouninpohja there are the jumps which add another figure to these calculations..... But then again, every rally has it´s own characters which affect this. Black ice, mud on tarmac, water and so on.

You simply need to know why the average speed is what it is. I think we can agree on this?

...
No need to be patronising, meverrko. I do know someting of speeds in rallying, having rallied as a codriver for 28 years and having sat in WRC and 4WD Group A cars since the mid nineties. My "record" on gravel in a Corolla WRC is 216 km/h. The highest average speed was 131 km/h on a 10 km stage in Estonia. Normally I don`t react to speed, being occupied with pace notes actually gives you a very "dim" wiew of what speeds you are travelling with.
But I like technical and narrow roads better than the superfast and wide stuff.

Actually I remember now what was the theme in the Autosport feature. It was a description of the ten most scary stages in the WRC. And Ouninpohja came out on top. Actually most of the stages mentioned in the feature was very fast stuff. So drivers tend to feel its scarier when stages have a high average. Whether this is a realistic evaluation of safety, is another question,