‘WRC needs SUPERSTARS, not just winners’ – Ben Sulayem

[Sulland]

The new FIA President feels Rally at the top level lacks real personalities, what he calla superstars.

Is he on to something, or is he totally mistaken?

https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/wrc-n...s-ben-sulayem/

[WRCStan]

Mistaken IMO. It's not 1972, nobody cares for influencers or needs somebody with a voice to tackle political issues. Whether he's right or wrong, what can he do about it, what will he do about it? Nothing.

[macebig]

The allusion here is that WRC needs another Colin McRae i.e. someone who will transcend the sport and bring in new fans. Maybe the EA deal can help.

[cali]

I think the personalities are there but the whole series lacks proper presentation for the big masses. There's no real effort to popularize the sport, no weekly tv magazines, no inside stories, no proper team presentation etc etc

The other thing is that for average Joe this sport requires more knowledge and preparation and patience throughout 3 days than your average sport like F1 or Football (the real one, not the Football which they play with hands )

Sent from my DN2103 using Tapatalk

[WRCStan]

The allusion here is that WRC needs another Colin McRae i.e. someone who will transcend the sport and bring in new fans.

Colin was an unlikely organic star. He broke convention, team orders and arguably the rulebook in the era that WRC was open. You couldn't falsify that if you tried today. Rallying and car-culture isn't relevant to most people's lives now either, that's why they'll never bring in new fans. That's my wider answer to Colin constantly raising this topic especially with young people in mind. Doesn't matter how many TikTok followers or Insta posts with emojis (the obvious points) - they'll never own a car, drive it above 80kph or pull handbrake turns on a car park.

[AnttiL]

Colin was an unlikely organic star. He broke convention, team orders and arguably the rulebook in the era that WRC was open. You couldn't falsify that if you tried today. Rallying and car-culture isn't relevant to most people's lives now either, that's why they'll never bring in new fans. That's my wider answer to Colin constantly raising this topic especially with young people in mind. Doesn't matter how many TikTok followers or Insta posts with emojis (the obvious points) - they'll never own a car, drive it above 80kph or pull handbrake turns on a car park.

It's difficult to decode what made Colin such a big star. Was it in the end that he was the first British driver to succeed on WRC level? All the big witty comments and rebellious behaviour started after his first wins or during the championship season.

I would say Tänak has a similar background, he's also the first internationally successful driver of his country since a long time, and he gives witty comments and sometimes acts "rebelliously". He also crashed often early into his career, and the Titanäk incident is recalled on WRC+ as often as McRae's 1000 Lakes 1992. However, the difference is that Estonia is not as powerful nation in rally media as GB was in the 90's, and the worldwide weight of the sport is not on the same level. The Colin McRae Rally games also made McRae a bigger super star than any other WRC driver, there have been kids who played that game without knowing that Colin McRae is an actual person!

We could also say Kris Meeke inherited some of his mentor's behaviour, but lacked the big success.

And what about Marcus Grönholm? Was he ever considered a McRae level super star? He also had success, witty comments and early career crashes.

Some of the most successful drivers in Finland like Tommi Mäkinen, Juha Kankkunen, Ari Vatanen and Hannu Mikkola were always shy and/or polite (you could also say boring) in media. Timo Salonen sometimes gave witty comments and had some unique characteristics, but his career was so short that no one thinks about him before the four aforementioned ones.

Pastrana and Block cannot be compared, here because it's a completely another world that they come from. WRC is not present in the USA and their success is based in different disciplines. It's easy to enjoy a 10 minute Gymkhana video rather than follow a four day rally let alone a whole championship season.

Good question from Bin Sulyaem, but I would say it's not possible to make WRC superstars anymore. Maybe it's more about the Sebastiens setting a some sort of standard for the past 20 years?

[WRCStan]

However, the difference is that Estonia is not as powerful nation in rally media as GB was in the 90's.

We may ultimately agree here, but this might miss the point that no media organisation is as powerful as in the 90s - so the content can't be either, regardless of McRae v Tänak, GB v Estonia or the popularity of rally. People now consume their own chosen media individually, families don't watch one screen together, nobody goes to work and talk about the previous night's tele anymore, nobody leaves a newspaper in the canteen anymore. We're all in our own bubbles - this forum is in mine, I don't talk to people around me about rally and I bet a lot of you are the same. WRC won't get into new bubbles unless it's relevant to those people's lives and sadly rallying just isn't. Doesn't matter if it's free, there's billions of hours of free video, pods and content to consume every day. People need to care. I'll bet very few of you search free channels looking for something new to consume. If you put TV on, you watch the things you already know (likely in the background of being within your phone bubble).

Stars, Jeez. Open question: other than Ronaldo (36), Messi (34) and Hamilton (37) - name a current global star (under 30 for an extra challenge), that transcends their sport.

[focus206]

It's difficult to decode what made Colin such a big star. Was it in the end that he was the first British driver to succeed on WRC level? All the big witty comments and rebellious behaviour started after his first wins or during the championship season.

I would say Tänak has a similar background, he's also the first internationally successful driver of his country since a long time, and he gives witty comments and sometimes acts "rebelliously". He also crashed often early into his career, and the Titanäk incident is recalled on WRC+ as often as McRae's 1000 Lakes 1992. However, the difference is that Estonia is not as powerful nation in rally media as GB was in the 90's, and the worldwide weight of the sport is not on the same level. The Colin McRae Rally games also made McRae a bigger super star than any other WRC driver, there have been kids who played that game without knowing that Colin McRae is an actual person!

I think the Colin McRae Rally videogames did a lot for McRae's popularity, especially on the younger audience back then. I remember in my middle school and highschool, there were various kids who knew that Colin McRae was a famous rally driver because of the videogames. But I doubt many of them eventualy got interested in rallying, considering there was almost no way of following it. The only other driver I remember being mentioned was Ari Vatanen and his Pikes Peak one hand drive On the other hand, rally cars like Impreza, Lancer, Delta, Quattro etc. were known by many.
I agree that in Colin's case it was a mix between being an already popular driver + videogames + being Scottish and therefore being internationally pushed by the British media.

[AndyRAC]

He's sort of got a point; the sport can't produce personalities who transcend the sport - and it's been like this way for 10-15+ years. For all the success of Loeb & Ogier, they are hardly full of personality. In fact, under the old promoters, we saw them trying when Raikkonen, Rossi, Kubica and Block who would take part, thanks to their huge fanbase - and interest in the sport. Didn't really do a lot though, did it?

And the big issue, the lack of decent free to air coverage; being behind a paywall is a problem they have to sort out, as it's one of many reasons why more manufacturers aren't showing up.

[focus206]

And the big issue, the lack of decent free to air coverage; being behind a paywall is a problem they have to sort out, as it's one of many reasons why more manufacturers aren't showing up.

This is the fundament of the problem indeed. How can we expect people to even start getting interested into rallying if everything is blocked - I would say even "hidden" - behind a paywall? We have whole motorsport championships, even of great importance, on live stream for free. Absurd that they can't afford to broadcast at least a couple of stages per event for free on YouTube, to attract interest. Nobody is going to say "wow, these 2 minutes video of WRC highlights is great! Let me purchase WRC+!".
As for personalities, I don't care for F1 high drama media pushed personalities. I think that for something like that to come, we'd need bigger, invested fanbase... I don't think that all F1 drivers are these incredibly interesting "superstars" while rally drivers are boring people. It's just that F1 has way more fans, so it's useless to try and manufacture "rally superstars" without solving the base issues.