WRC future

[denkimi]

What about ... shorter events ? The 3 days format with 9-12 and 2-5 driving is ridiculous - sounds more like a government employee's job than sports. So is the sunday which is pretty much useless in every rally result-wise. This was made for TV way back then (late 90's) - Nowadays is the age of internet (aka Rally-Live), who cares of a sunday at noon ending ?

Wouldn't money be saved by shaving of 1 day ? and since stages are mostly the same year after year, coudn't recce be also shortened, at least for the top teams that have been coming to these stages year after year ?

What about the idea of dropping off shakedown ? I now teams would hate it, but we, as fan, may enjoy a bit of unpredictability in the result by having a few surprises if some team would come up with the wrong set-up . One of the big issues of rallyes today is that it is always the same drivers that win - not as bad as F1 but close...

That is my idea too. Make it more compact. Let them drive from friday morning till late at night, and again from saturday morning early till late in the evening. No 5 days of only 4 stages, but 2 days of 10 stages.
Recce can't be shortened, they already have only 2 passes. Shakedown is also not a problem, everyone is there already.

But none of that will make much difference for manufacturers. If we're talking about budgets of tens of millions, a few ten thousands spend on hotels and food isn't the problem.


If you see wat msport can do with their tight budget, money is not really the issue. For a big marque, 40 million dollar means nothing.

Its just that manufacturers do not believe they will get the return on investment.

And last bnut not least since i am seldom logged into the forum (but reading everyone's posts vivivdely), can't we get rid of Rally2 (super rally) ? I know manufacturers want exposure for their cars, but this aint' the spirit of rallying. Rallying is about speed on normal road (for which people can easily materialize how incredible these drivers are) but also has the notion of endurance built into it. Not anymore 60's style where drivers would seldom sleep for 4 days, but at least if you break your car, you're out, as simple as that. This may sound a bit oldies (which i am), but if we lose this (and we are close to), we lose the whole perception of rallying for the fan/people - we may as well go rallycross.

Before the days of rally2 we had flying service. If you could make it to the end of the stage somehow, the mechanics could probably fix it. Nowadays, if you rip a wheel off, the rally is finished since you aren't even allowed to drive on public roads without 4 rotating wheels.

Its either service after every stage, or rally2.