Future format of WRC events?

[AnttiL]

Yet the drivers themselves speak of rallies as the essence of motorsport and the images prove it. Yet we are no longer able to intrigue someone to wake up early in the morning, pack a backpack and go on trial.

"I would never do this again because we are in 2022 and we must remember that the 80s have passed for forty years. I keep saying it. It is useless that we continue to want to convince people that the past is beautiful. The past is over.

Let us ask ourselves: how do we bring to people what we have today with the tools we have today?

I take the liberty of saying one thing and I say: those of F1, who will be ugly, bad and unpleasant in the eyes of those of rallies, however, since Liberty Media arrived, he said "well gentlemen, now we do because we are continuing to talk to each other. us and to be self-referential ". And it is the same mistake we are making as we keep talking about rallies. All nice but outside the rallies nobody gives a damn, so you have to take someone who comes from outside who knows how to do real communication and says that now it is done like this.

F1 started using social media, Youtube, Netflix and all these things it does and, magic magic, now it goes to America. Because? Because they presented F1 in a different way than the stereotypical one that has been going on for years and today they like the same product. Then they made cars that know how to be more spectacular with less suffering in the wake thanks to studies paid for by the promoter. Not the FIA. Liberty Media invested some money, hired people, to do some studies and take it to a higher level of showmanship.

We keep talking, wondering how to do the best rallies with people who have been in rallies for 50 years and they keep telling each other that rallies are good. Okay, let's carry on but the guy across the street hasn't the faintest idea who these people are.

We make real reports, meetings with the drivers as it should be. Truly spectacular and well-known montages. People get passionate and go to see them and see them again. In Formula 1 you have your Coca Cola, lounges, sponsors and everything becomes a show. In rallies we take people far away to eat the dust and they don't give a damn."


Yet attempts like Ypres and Monza didn't go all that well, did they? Didn't they show something different than what rallies are?

"It was full. People care and whoever pays the ticket saves the race, but what really matters is the all-round visibility. Those who bring the money are the sponsors, the ones who pay for the TV rights. World F1 teams also get money based on TV rights, World Rally teams also pay for the air they breathe. Explain to me how a new manufacturer is attracted to a sport where: there is no visibility, he has spectators on the side of the road and maybe with an exit you kill someone, I have hospitality for sponsors but I often don't use them because the cars they go out in the morning and come back in the evening.

What show do I do in the service park? What's in there? Is there anyone who has raised the problem? No, there is All Live. They will write it on the plaque the day the rallies die: "but they had All Live"

https://www.rallyssimo.it/2022/05/28...-andrea-adamo/

Regarding this Adamo interview, let's discuss here what the future of rallying should be? More service-park centric? Back to old remote servicing? Or remain as it is now?

[tommeke_B]

It's quite odd, when people are talking about visibility/popularity etc, rallying is always compared to Formula 1... Comparing rallying to F1 is like comparing cycling to football. Now everything seems centered about all live, but I really wonder how many (or few) people are watching it. I'm a big fan, have a subscription, but apart from the powerstages I've seen maybe 3 or 4 stages live on it, this year...

For the sport itself and the service-park vs remote service, I think it should be up to the organizers to decide their format. What works in Finland or Croatia does not necessarily work in Acropolis or Wales.

[Sulland]

Historic reference for the subject;

https://www.motorsportforums.com/sho...ghlight=future

In my book we need more difference in the WRC calendar, not only the sprint format they use today.
Listening to Michele Mouton on how it was in the past, with longer rallies that could have 40-60 different SS.

[WRCStan]

There's not necessarily anything wrong with the events if the promoters responsibilities, commercial structure and regulations could be tweaked. To Adamo's points, I'd start there. Moreover, any change to events would be pointless without revolution here.

On the idea of 'Monzas' though, finish them with a single-venue Sunday rather than a power stage. Combine them with a World Rallysprint Championship on the Sunday. Co-drivers optional. Fly in your VIPs then. If travelling service parks make combining special stages and single-venues more feasible, do it.

[steve.mandzij]

There's not necessarily anything wrong with the events if the promoters responsibilities, commercial structure and regulations could be tweaked. To Adamo's points, I'd start there. Moreover, any change to events would be pointless without revolution here.

On the idea of 'Monzas' though, finish them with a single-venue Sunday rather than a power stage. Combine them with a World Rallysprint Championship on the Sunday. Co-drivers optional. Fly in your VIPs then. If travelling service parks make combining special stages and single-venues more feasible, do it.

i hope you're kidding,,,

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[WRCStan]

i hope you're kidding,,,

I'm not saying every round or the classics, and still have 2/3 days of special stages, just something different for one day. In fact it's traditional in GB to have a 'Stately homes day', I just put it at one place. Ypres '21 was pretty much it, Spa was just underutilised (Covid rules? Can't remember), Germany could use the Nurburgring or Baumholder maybe. Spain, circuit Catalunya. Monza doesn't work for me in December. Perhaps getting circuits can be tough but other single-venues could be available?

Should be a show, a spectacle. Get Rallycross on the same weekend even. Same promotor FFS. Get Walter Rohrl displaying the Audi, Neuville said it. MBS can get his stars doing the rallysprint... etc.

What is it you don't like?

[steve.mandzij]

I'm not saying every round or the classics, and still have 2/3 days of special stages, just something different for one day. In fact it's traditional in GB to have a 'Stately homes day', I just put it at one place. Ypres '21 was pretty much it, Spa was just underutilised (Covid rules? Can't remember), Germany could use the Nurburgring or Baumholder maybe. Spain, circuit Catalunya. Monza doesn't work for me in December. Perhaps getting circuits can be tough but other single-venues could be available?

Should be a show, a spectacle. Get Rallycross on the same weekend even. Same promotor FFS. Get Walter Rohrl displaying the Audi, Neuville said it. MBS can get his stars doing the rallysprint... etc.

What is it you don't like?

the way I replied was tongue-in-cheek, but I do think this is a load of rubbish. F1 doesn't need road shows every weekend to stay relevant and bring itself to the masses, and crucially those street shows aren't at all part of the competitive portion of the sport. Rallysprints and rallyshows have no place in the pinnacle of rallying for me: the sport is a spectacle in itself, it just needs better marketing! Nobody wants to see a rally sprint or a gymkhana show anymore. If they did, then World RX wouldn't be dead.

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[WRCStan]

the sport is a spectacle in itself, it just needs better marketing!

This is part of my base case of a ground up reform. Super-Sundays are not a hill I'll die on by any means, was trying to stay relevant to the thread.

I think the conversation on how the sport is run, promoted, regulated, who for and who gets to make money out of it is the discussion to have, but perhaps it's been covered to death here and sometimes the only prominent answer is "they should do more free coverage", but I'd always enjoy that thread if it returned.

[kirungi okwogera]

I am philosophical about this. There is nothing in the nature of rally that lends it to doing the same thing as F1 (except in one crucial way they should absolutely imitate -- getting a very skillful documentary filmmaking team to document seasons behind the scenes a la Drive to Survive, which multiple non-motorsport-fan American friends and family of mine have repeatedly recommended to me, unprompted). Suggestions to build the sport by not doing the sport, or doing a different sport/event alongside it, seem like desperation. Desperation to achieve what? Parity with F1?

Why can't WRC be second fiddle to F1? Why does it always seem to urgently need so many more viewers, so much more visibility? The money, right. But then, is it a good idea in the first place to cost X millions to run a single car at the top level, so as to require a very high level of world market visibility to bring value the manu's that compete?

I don't know, if there was a lot less money in the sport I think I would still find it entertaining to see the best drivers in the world compete. If they were all driving slower cars, I'd be a little disappointed, sure, but driving skill does still show and HP by themselves are not so expensive. Others have said before, less tire and suspension and grip technologies and more HP also makes for a more spectacular driving style, if slower stage times. But oh no! That sounds like a regional backwater event.

What makes a WRC event special compared to a regional event? High level cars and high level drivers. In a regional event a rich gent can run a used WRC car competitively while the most talented driver in the event might be running a FWD. So WRC does need special visibility in media, from organizers, and from manu's and teams to try and find these good drivers and put them in the best cars to avoid that fate. Currently, this does happen in WRC to some extent - they do look for actually good drivers because it will win them rallies. Most of us would agree that current and past champions have not gotten there through luck of being the best funded guy (or on the best funded team, though you could argue that unequal teams do affect the championship a lot). If WRC maintains enough prestige so this system of talent scouting continued to exist, ensuring actual competition between actually skilled drivers, then I'd accept it never being F1.

If you are WRC and you "be yourself" - that is, don't chase money that requires you to try to change your sport into F1/rallycross/motogp etc., and if that means less money, regulate less money in the ways you can to still bring value to participants, it opens up opportunities in other ways. Format experimentation that keeps things still rally. Old timey nostalgics can suggest 5000 mile rallies that take 8 days or whatever. Corsica 8x 50km stages. All that stuff that feels more "pure" rally because it takes what makes rally special and increases it, rather than diminishing it.

And get people who know how to film this kind of thing not as sports coverage but as Film with a capital F. That's the biggest lesson to take from F1. Cinematic drama draws people to your live events/coverage.

Just some thoughts. The discussion always seems to be this desperate focus on being like the more successful motorsport when it can never be. Working with the differences as selling points seems like a better idea than pretending they don't exist.

[WRCStan]

Great post but some points run contrary to a widely misunderstood fundamental. This championship serves WRC Promoter, not the other way round. That's a reality I consider when I posted.

I think we can all spot that things aren't great for the sport but not really see or agree why, which is why we have these discussions. It isn't because we all think it should be as big as F1. Don't think Adamo even made that point.