WRC future

[AnttiL]

On another topic : Did anyone ever thought if significant cost cuts could not be made by proper adjustments to the calendar ? For once i never understood why no one has ever considered / thought about "double headers" (2 events close enough, one week apart to save travel costs). Corsica and Sardigna would be the closest, but of course one. is gravel and the other tarmac... One could consider finland-Estonia, Deutschland-Croatia-Belgium even Catalunya, NZ-Australia, Chile-Agentina, etc ...

Chile-Argentina and Portugal-Sardegna were done like this in 2019. And would have been done this year as well, had it not been for COVID-19. In 2021 Portugal-Sardegna and Estonia-Finland are planned like this.

I am wondering also as well is the FIA could not break this stupid 3 days - sunday noon ending rule which I don't think has ever reached its goal (sunday noon air TV coverage ...) and his killing the spirit and the "rythm" of events. Now that they all look the same, it is less appelaing to fans with pretty empty 9-to-12 and 2-to5 days, to the average joeand probably to manufacturers PR guys (to make up a nice and unique story).

Why would'nt events be somehow different : some short, 2 days or 1.5 days "sprint" events (basically craming today's SS mileage in 2 days) a few "endurance events (aka Turkey) and a few longer (3,4 full days ?) "major" events that would be the jewels of the crown and could be sold as such to casual fans ? Would'nt that save costs as well and increase the PR value of the sport ? Ideas ?

There's a whole lot of things which affect the itineraries. You mentioned the "empty 9-to-12 and 2-to5 days". In some countries (Wales, Sardegna) there's a long distance from a reasonable service park location to reasonable stages, and the liaisons just need to be tackled at a certain maximum average speed which is determined by each country. This just results in long breaks between the service and the stages, and it cannot be avoided. There's also other things like remote refuels and recce schedules which are limiting the itinerary design.

If you're interested in this topic, take look at this post https://itgetsfasternow.com/2019/02/...the-rule-book/

As for killing the rhythm and spirit, I think this is highly subjective and I don't think most fans care about the events being always the same.

As for having events that could have different lengths, I've written about this a few years ago on my blog

https://itgetsfasternow.com/2018/01/...not-have-both/

Obviously there's a lot of questions to answer there. Should a long rally award the same amount of points than short? How would we choose who gets to do a short and who a long one? Would privateers avoid the long events because of higher costs?

Also worth reading if you're interested is my article where I interviewed the clerks of the courses of Wales Rally GB and Rally Finland, on what it would mean to shorten or lengthen the rallies by one day. Not as simple as it sounds like.

https://itgetsfasternow.com/2020/06/...in-three-days/

I like Tarkiainen's idea of ending the rally at Saturday evening, but I have no idea about how that would change TV ratings or would any channels broadcast rallying on Saturday evening when there's lots of competition for air time?