Belgian Rally News

[dimviii]

https://www.facebook.com/XavierBadot...=page_internal

[dimviii]

http://www.ewrc.cz/ewrc/fotogalery.p...35&fotograf=77

[JoostSchouten]

What a crazy event, all I need to say!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apFuUjJKDQ

[dimviii]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3PR...ature=youtu.be

[Simmi]

Looks like an awesome event. If I lived a bit further south in the UK I'd be over in Belgium all the time spectating.

What is the best event in the championship to go and watch?

[MartijnS]

I think this is one of the best to come over for, shakedown on friday, 2 days of rallying or Ypres.

My photos of yesterdays visit are online! Afternoon made things better, some good spots and nice driving!







More at our Facebook page or our Website !

[tommeke_B]

Looks like an awesome event. If I lived a bit further south in the UK I'd be over in Belgium all the time spectating.

What is the best event in the championship to go and watch?

There are 9 events in the Belgian Rally Championship, all quite familiar to me as I've done every event each year in the last 9 seasons. For me only 3 events could be worth traveling abroad for. Wallonie (held in end of april or early may), Ypres (end of june) and Condroz (beginning of november).

My N°1 recommendation would be Ypres. For people from UK it's the least far, and it has the best entry list BY FAR, not in quantity but in quality. There are always plenty of R5/S2000 cars with great drivers, from ERC and from Belgium (partly championship drivers but also many one-shots). Also the R2 category is always interesting in Ypres, especially now with the Junior ERC. When there's some gap in the timing you can see the historic cars if you are lucky. The organisation is the best in Belgium, as it's on ERC level. For the stages it's something personal, I like the Ypres stages more and more every year. You must like some really fast action, you will not see the cars go extremely sideways like in Condroz, but the speed is very impressive on many places. What you see from the R5 drivers (Loix, Abbring, Bouffier, Lefebvre, Breen etc) is just amazing, and in my opinion more impressive to see than tarmac action from WRC cars. The R5 cars are just more entertaining to watch, especially on high speeds and on bumpy roads. In terms of timing it's quite easy to see something like 8 stages on the event (friday and saturday).

N°2 for me is Condroz. The event is stretched over 3 days. There's a long shakedown on friday afternoon (from 12 to 17 O'Clock), on saturday and sunday the actual stages are run. The itinerary is probably easier than Ypres, if you want to see a lot of car and a lot of stages. In terms of entries, the list always looks impressive. A lot of great cars and some great names. The reality is often a bit different. During the event you see that a lot of those big WRC cars aren't so spectacular because the drivers aren't good enough or aren't used to the cars enough... In many cases it's more entertaining to watch an R3 or R2 car driven on the limit, than to watch some WRC car being driven on 80% of it's capabilities (with all respect to those drivers). The biggest disadvantage of Condroz is the organisation, they are quite useless compared to other events this big. The crowds are huge. I've been on most European WRC events that are on the current calendar, and I've never seen such big crowds (not just on a public area, but really on every corner of the rally) like in Condroz. The organizers can't handle the number of people (sometimes drunk), which causes very dangerous situations almost comparable to the images you've seen from the Group B era... I'm often wondering how it's possible there aren't more accidents with spectators, fortunately they are very rare... Also due to the big number of spectators it's not the easiest event to spectate. There are a lot of cars moving between the stages, often causing traffic jams, and on all access roads there are a lot of cars parked, if you arrive a bit late you usually have to do some long walk before you get to the stage.

N°3 for me is Rallye de Wallonie. A nice long event (in SS kms I think it was the longest Belgian event this year), with very good itinerary. One stage on friday night on the Citadelle de Namur (even without a rallycar it's a nice place to visit https://scontent-bru2-1.xx.fbcdn.net...69882519_o.jpg). On saturday they usually drive 4 different stages 3 times, making it easy to see 6 stages that day. On sunday there are usually 2x5 stages in the last few years, making it easy to see 4 stages. Regarding entries, it's always less than Condroz, but getting better and better every year. This year the entry list was very nice. Also there was a nice battle where 4 drivers with very different cars (an R5, a S2000, a 1.6 WRC and a 2L WRC) were fighting for the win until the last stages. Talking about the organisation, it's the same problem as in Condroz... Fortunately Rallye de Wallonie doesn't have the big reputation as Condroz, and the number of spectators is many times lower. The safety-issue you see in Condroz is almost non-existant in Wallonie, but with some issues it's easy to have some delayed stages, more events are run with delay than without, in the region of Condroz and Wallonie... The stages themselves are very different from each other. Some are very nice, some are quite boring and have only few nice spots.

[tommeke_B]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygxwUmohus Great onboard from Cherain on SS Marchin-Perwez, the nicest stage of the event this year.

[dimviii]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygxwUmohus Great onboard from Cherain on SS Marchin-Perwez, the nicest stage of the event this year.

at 7,37 he was a bit angry with position of spectators.

[tommeke_B]

at 7,37 he was a bit angry with position of spectators.

Not only there... Unfortunately the organizers aren't taking up their responsibility.

In 2003 a fatal accident happened on this jump, now people are still standing on the same dangerous positions as they were back then... (Photo by Sébastien Turkery)

It's a strange thing, the crowd is so big that it's uncontrollable, and in the end almost all spectators are at risk if they want to see the cars.