Return of Rough Rallies - Are the Cars Ready?

[MentalParadox]

The return of Turkey to the calendar marks the return of rough endurance-style rallies like Cyprus and Acropolis in the old days. In 2020, we're likely going to get the Safari back. We've seen in this edition of Turkey that many cars just break down, even without having really hit anything. They just seem to fall apart.

Have the modern WRC cars become too fragile from years of running a championship without rough rallies? Will manufacturers have to update their cars to survive in future seasons, when we might have two or maybe even three of these rougher rallies?

[deephouse]

Have they not talked about decreasing lenght of stages or even decreasing lenght of rally itself? Here they break most on the marathon ones, right.

[MentalParadox]

Not sure I like the sound of that. But I suppose it's better than their plans for the Safari. I heard they want to replace all the awesome savanna 'roads' with clean, manicured roads on private property. Rough gravel sections, gone. Natural watersplashes, gone. That's not the Safari I wanted. I guess I prefer shorter rallies if it means preserving the spirit of the rallies.

[AnttiL]

Not sure I like the sound of that. But I suppose it's better than their plans for the Safari. I heard they want to replace all the awesome savanna 'roads' with clean, manicured roads on private property. Rough gravel sections, gone. Natural watersplashes, gone. That's not the Safari I wanted.

Go see yourself from the 2018 event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWa0dhVqhw

It's still rough all right

[Oliverk]

Go see yourself from the 2018 event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWa0dhVqhw

It's still rough all right

Looks like average speed 160+ if dryish

[AnttiL]

Looks like average speed 160+ if dryish

True, I was also concerned over the fast-looking roads on https://itgetsfasternow.wordpress.co...f-the-safari/t earlier this year. There's straights over a kilometre long and they were doing some stages already 120 km/h on the private Mitsubishi Evo's.

[Mirek]

The return of Turkey to the calendar marks the return of rough endurance-style rallies like Cyprus and Acropolis in the old days. In 2020, we're likely going to get the Safari back. We've seen in this edition of Turkey that many cars just break down, even without having really hit anything. They just seem to fall apart.

Have the modern WRC cars become too fragile from years of running a championship without rough rallies? Will manufacturers have to update their cars to survive in future seasons, when we might have two or maybe even three of these rougher rallies?

Why everyone speaks only about WRC cars when there is only a small minority of them in the entry lists (roughly between 1/10 and 1/3 of all cars)? It's the WRC cars and the works teams which can cope with such stages the best. For others it's much harder.

[the sniper]

Why everyone speaks only about WRC cars when there is only a small minority of them in the entry lists (roughly between 1/10 and 1/3 of all cars)? It's the WRC cars and the works teams which can cope with such stages the best. For others it's much harder.

I would imagine the vast majority of non WRC car entries on a reborn Safari rally would come from local guys who are used to those conditions in the Kenyan championship. Given that WRC2 doesn't require competitors to do anywhere near every round, and I doubt the Safari will be in the JWRC, nobody will be forced to take part if they don't want to.

As MentalParadox says though, if the candidate event is representative of the final event, I don't think the roads will be as rough as we saw in Turkey. The problem will be the much higher speeds involved.

Having two rougher rallies kind of works nicely with the twinning of events for chassis. Might make a more 'endurance' spec car make sense.

[steve.mandzij]

I would imagine the vast majority of non WRC car entries on a reborn Safari rally would come from local guys who are used to those conditions in the Kenyan championship. Given that WRC2 doesn't require competitors to do anywhere near every round, and I doubt the Safari will be in the JWRC, nobody will be forced to take part if they don't want to.

As MentalParadox says though, if the candidate event is representative of the final event, I don't think the roads will be as rough as we saw in Turkey. The problem will be the much higher speeds involved.

Having two rougher rallies kind of works nicely with the twinning of events for chassis. Might make a more 'endurance' spec car make sense.

If endurance type cars make a return I'll be fully supportive of the rougher events

[Sulland]

Regarding tyres in Turkey, the remark Henning made, was on the tyredifference between RC1 and RC2 cars. He said that in this rally he could have been even closer to the RC1 cars if he had bolted on same type of tyre as they are using.

Aprox 10 kg of reinforements btw the two types of tyres.

But if you add strength on tyre, then something else on the car will brake first, often something else in the wheel/suspension area. The weakest link will simply move!

The natural thing to do, is then to drive slower to make sure the car holds together in one piece. That is also an important part of rally.