[WRC] News & Rumours 2021

[Francis44]

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.

Precisely, and thats such a problem aswell since those 90 minutes do not represent at all the hard work all crews have putted in all weekend, specially when all cruise on PS when the gaps are more os less controlled.

This is nonsense. Basically you want to run only city stages?

Not exactly, what I think the sports needs is properly located outside cameras and good quality broadcasts, it is so lazy to fall always on onboard action.

[AnttiL]

Precisely, and thats such a problem aswell since those 90 minutes do not represent at all the hard work all crews have putted in all weekend, specially when all cruise on PS when the gaps are more os less controlled.

Think again, power stage gives points, you cannot just cruise. Besides, like Sardegna 2018 or Monte 2019 has proven, you can decide the winner on the power stage.

Not exactly, what I think the sports needs is properly located outside cameras and good quality broadcasts, it is so lazy to fall always on onboard action.

How are you going to solve this? By spend more money to put a cameraman in every corner of the rally? Or by driving over and over again the same short stages so you never fall out of camera sight? Besides, if you ever watch the TV stages, they mostly show external footage. And All Live has also the helicopter.

[Francis44]

Think again, power stage gives points, you cannot just cruise. Besides, like Sardegna 2018 or Monte 2019 has proven, you can decide the winner on the power stage.

C'mon dont be so naive, you now perfectly well only Ogier and maybe Tanak push close to limit to gather PS points while leading, the rest tend to cruise while in that position (very rarely unfortunately as we know).

How are you going to solve this? By spend more money to put a cameraman in every corner of the rally? Or by driving over and over again the same short stages so you never fall out of camera sight? Besides, if you ever watch the TV stages, they mostly show external footage. And All Live has also the helicopter.

Why not?! Wasn't this been done before? Less sometimes is more and I dont think we should sacrifice quality just to have every single stage live (and again, as we know, sometimes that promise is not delivered).
Does is cost more?! It does, but so do the hybrid cars. Cost is relative when the gain is clear

[denkimi]

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.

Weird to see how who have personally seen it happen in the past still claim that it would be impossible.

20 years ago they did a 400km monte carlo in 3 days. Nowadays they need 5 days for 300km's.
Even as far as 2013 we had a 470km long monte in 4 days.

So no, there is no reason why it can't done. Only excuses to obscure why they don't want it to be done.

How are you going to solve this? By spend more money to put a cameraman in every corner of the rally? Or by driving over and over again the same short stages so you never fall out of camera sight? Besides, if you ever watch the TV stages, they mostly show external footage. And All Live has also the helicopter.

Lets have some drones follow the cars.

[wyler]

Lets have some drones follow the cars.

the only drone that can do this is...an helicopter! ; )

[sti123]

Weird to see how who have personally seen it happen in the past still claim that it would be impossible.

20 years ago they did a 400km monte carlo in 3 days. Nowadays they need 5 days for 300km's.
Even as far as 2013 we had a 470km long monte in 4 days.

So no, there is no reason why it can't done. Only excuses to obscure why they don't want it to be done.


Lets have some drones follow the cars.

20 years ago they had remote service areas which allowed more stage kilometers. With central service setup WRC has now, it's not possible.

[AnttiL]

20 years ago they did a 400km monte carlo in 3 days. Nowadays they need 5 days for 300km's.
Even as far as 2013 we had a 470km long monte in 4 days. .

What is this 5 days rally? Without COVID we would have a four-day rally, which is essentially a three-day rally since Thursday and Sunday are not full rally days. And that format allowed rallies to be 400 km long just a few years ago. But as the rallies shortened from 400 to 300 km the formats remained the same, only the longest stages were exchanged for shorter ones. To me this is not a big difference.

[AnttiL]

20 years ago they had remote service areas which allowed more stage kilometers. With central service setup WRC has now, it's not possible.

But Monte 1998 had only 359 stage kilometres People tend to think rallies were wwwwaaaaayyyy longer in the past, but really the difference is subtle.

[EstWRC]

wasn there a rule from FIA few years ago that the rally cant have more than 350 stage kilometres?

[AnttiL]

Why not?! Wasn't this been done before? Less sometimes is more and I dont think we should sacrifice quality just to have every single stage live (and again, as we know, sometimes that promise is not delivered).
Does is cost more?! It does, but so do the hybrid cars. Cost is relative when the gain is clear

I don't understand what you mean now. The All Live team has a fixed number of cameras and cameramen. They move from stage to stage so we get a bit of external footage from maybe every second stage. We cannot exchange this into something where we see one stage covered from beginning to the end because they would need 2-4 cameras per kilometre.

The cost of the cars is an investment of the teams (or car manufacturers). The cost of the fotoage is an investment of the WRC promoter. They are not exhangeable.

C'mon dont be so naive, you now perfectly well only Ogier and maybe Tanak push close to limit to gather PS points while leading, the rest tend to cruise while in that position (very rarely unfortunately as we know).

I would have to disagree. For example Rovanperä winning the power stage in Sweden 2020 was a big show. Also Sardegna had a very close podium in 2020. Power stages have been quite dramatic during the last four seasons. Maybe third drivers like Sordo sometimes get the order to just finish the rally, depending on the situation.