[WRC] News & Rumours 2021

[AnttiL]

flasbacks how i saw Al Quassimi driving against the TOP guys at rally finland.

simply saying, very slow and boring

I like this approach, you can only get surprised positively.

[doubled1978]

F1 has an budget cap but a $200 million entry fee for new teams to make it "special" they might ditch for the new Monaco based team that wants to enter though

Yeah that’s true, and they don’t allow new teams to take any prize money in the first year as well don’t they?
But for WRC do you think a cost cap could work? I know there are already some loopholes I can think of that would pose a problem, such as the cars being entered in non WRC events by satellite teams and such which don’t exist in F1.
But if the cost to compete at the top is a barrier to entry for others, is it something that could help?

[AnttiL]

I think it is time to face the music and admit the sport as it is now is not very marketable, we can't have 3-5 day events, it's just not possible to gather the interest of a new audience in this format.

The problem is not the regulations, see how WEC, Dakar and even F1 is doing.

We need a 1 day full of special stages with good quality live coverage. F1 does so well exactly because of that, a simple race of 90 minutes and that's it, onto the next. The hardcore follow all the FP and Qualifying, but thats marginal compared to race viewership.

But anyway tell that to the fanatics of long stages and 1000km events.

I thought we're having that right now, essentially, with the COVID-shortened events. Friday has shakedown and maybe 1-2 stages. Saturday is a full day with a live TV stage, and Sunday is a short day with the power stage finale on TV.

We cannot compare F1 methods with rallying because the sport operates differently, there's special stages with liaisons, which takes time, and the cameras have to follow the cars compared to a racing circuit where you can have one camera shooting all the laps at one sitting.

But if we want do use your F1 analogy, power stage is "the 90 minute race". At the end you get the results and although the overall situation rarely changes, you get the excitement of the power stage points.

[AnttiL]

Its laughable how short and uneventful WRC events are nowadays. F1 cars race one and half hours to complete over 300 km. WRC takes three days!!!

You know why that is. We cannot have a 300 km special stage, there needs to be liaisons and services. But WRC doesn't take three days to complete 300 km, the rallies are usually over 1000 km long with the liaisons included. The 300 km of special stages take about three hours to run

I've had long talks with rally organizers and looked at the itineraries in close detail, there isn't really many ways to pack more stages into rally days than there is now. At least not on the scale where it would make a difference. EDIT: also see the post below.

[AnttiL]

We also need to remember that if we keep a rally centered around a specific area and run all the stages close to the service park, we would also have a much needed improvement in the broadcast quality. We need to get rid of shoddy, grey, low quality onboards.

This is nonsense. Basically you want to run only city stages? Although I don't understand how the onboard quality (on All Live) is affected by the terrain. They have the transmitter aeroplane flying over the stages, and the distance to the ground is equal in cities and forests. The only exception is on mountainous rallies like Monte where a mountain can be between the car and the aeroplane, resulting in signal blockage.

It's a big dilemma for rally organizers to have the service park in a place with enough room and infrastructure for all teams to set up (there needs to be hotels and restaurants as well) but close to the stages. And some countries have their own regulations for liaison average speeds (Italy and GB come to mind) which make the liaison times usually longer than necessary.

[flykas]

Yeah I though about the rebound situations, might be some good moments, bet the suspension of current cars is so spectacular, its crazy how in Finland the car is in the air for half of the time:] I am afraid that might be toned down a bit.

[Andre Oliveira]

That looks cool to WRC

https://bestcarweb.jp/news/245781

[abcrally]

ill never judge before i see the cars first, but reading this i somehow had flasbacks how i saw Al Quassimi driving against the TOP guys at rally finland.

simply saying, very slow and boring

OT but remember this clearly from 2007: My friend wondered how can any driver be two minutes slower than his teammate in a single stage!?
Well yes, Al Qassimi lost 2 mins to Grönholm on both runs of Ouninpohja. That Is A Lot.

[HKSjbg]

That looks cool to WRC

https://bestcarweb.jp/news/245781

This is allegedly a Subaru version of the GR Yaris isn’t it? The next Mazda2 is gonna be based on the standard Yaris and Suzuki are making more and more badge-engineered Toyotas, perhaps in dream world we could have a new Subaru WRX, Mazda2 MPS and Suzuki Swift SuperSport all based on the GR

[AnttiL]

OT but remember this clearly from 2007: My friend wondered how can any driver be two minutes slower than his teammate in a single stage!?
Well yes, Al Qassimi lost 2 mins to Grönholm on both runs of Ouninpohja. That Is A Lot.

In 2016 Ouninpohja was run similarly to 1994. Al-Qassimi equaled Kankkunen’s stage win of 1994, albeit losing 1:21 to Meeke

https://www.ewrc-results.com/results...2016/?s=119438

https://www.ewrc-results.com/results...y-1994/?s=7747