[WRC] News & Rumours 2019

[AnttiL]

It's different from country to country...

In Belgium we had WRC cars allowed 10 years ago. We had 2 people fighting for the win. Normally you could predict the complete top 5 correctly just because of the huge difference between the cars. Now without WRC cars destroying the competition, we have an average of 15 R5 cars in all BRC events, with more than 5 drivers capable of winning. All thanks to the more "reasonable" price of R5, and more equal competition. And of course thanks to having a good promotor. Most (if not all) top drivers in Belgium are driving only with sponsorship money, without own budget (or very little own budget). Right now most organizers have doubled the spectator figures compared to 10 years ago.

About the value of winning a local or national event, it's as big as the competition is. In Rallye de Wallonie few weeks ago, the difference between first and second was only 3 seconds. Last year in 5 of the 9 BRC events, the difference between first and second was less than 10s at the end of the rally. Closest win was Haspengouw with a 1,2s difference between Princen and Verschueren. With such competition, people are getting more excited and start following the sport more closely. Winning as only WRC car with 5 minutes advantage will be soon forgotten indeed...

For me it's a no-brainer, I prefer to see the WRC cars only in WRC.

You are implying that if there's a WRC car infront of the R5 cars, there won't be a competitive R5 field or no one will follow that? It's like (well a lot more than) WRC2 in WRC, people still follow that. And you also imply that people will remember details of the local rallies such as the margin or the car that the winner drove, but that people would not remember who was the fastest R5 in a tight battle behind the winning WRC?

Maybe I'm just spoiled in Finland where we have four separate championships for different classes of cars with usually intense battles in all of them and no one really cares about the rally overall results.