WRC Calendar 2018

[Eli]

Hey, someone remind me, didn't a misplaced spectator actually die in Monte Carlo this year? Did they even get a 'yellow card' for that? No? But Poland loses its place in the calendar for bad spectator behavior?

"No!", you say, "it was because the organizers were stupid and allowed a fire truck to go onto a live stage!" Indeed, and they let a police car onto a live stage in rally Deutschland this year as well, though we heard nary a peep about that from our industrious rally journalists.

Corruption at its very best. I hate this sort of thing, I really do.

If you need any more proof that the only thing that matters for getting onto the calendar is money and political influence, just look at the debacle of letting China into the calendar last year, or the fact that we still have Australia (they've apparently got money to burn) and no New Zealand, even though everyone actually would prefer the latter.

As they say these days: "Money Talks" & unfortunately here we see the result...I agree they should have at least given a yellow card or something at least so the organizers try and make an effort to improve the safety on both MC & Germany events. As for Australia & NZ, it annoys me that from 2013 Australia has taken over the spot and tbh with Coffs Harbour having agreed to host the rally until 2020 makes it a strong candidate to stay beyond next year at the expense of NZ, especially when you have the teams complaining they can't go to Australasia twice....

Another thing that bothered me was the fact they bring in Turkey with all that's going on there solely because they have the money...but no talks of Greece coming back? It used to be one of the toughest events on the calendar and a real car breaker... Now I know they had, well still have some hard financial times there but you would at least expect one of the (old) classic events (or at least one that could become a classic once more) to be given another look by both promoter and the FIA but again, money talks... or more specifically lack of money in this case.