Rally Liepāja 2016

[Martins Tolks]

I think they still want to organize snow event. (maybe at the end of February? who knows?) IMHO it is impossible to organize it as gravel rally. Rainy conditions would make damage to roads. Right?

No real chance of snow rally this season, all long term forecasts says winter is over here.
Gravel rally it should be, just don't mix kinda flood situation (30cm of snow is a lot of water) with occasional rain in summer. In last years, summers tend to be too dry, not too wet.
But let's see the dates.

[Mirek]

No, but they are resposible for the calendar and rules. Firstly, they ruined Janner Rally with their stupid rules, now they chose a rally in Liepaja, that cannot be organized without snow. Are they serious?

Jänner Rally organizers ruined themselves when they decided to buy the place in the calendar.

Besides that what stupid rules do You speak about? You simply can't allow non-FIA cars or tires in FIA event. There's nothing idiotic about that.

No one is blaming ERC or Eurosport. But in ERC´s condition something like this is not very good too.

Some do and it's pathetic.

[Jarek Z]

Besides that what stupid rules do You speak about? You simply can't allow non-FIA cars or tires in FIA event. There's nothing idiotic about that.

So why did the drivers complain?

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Rally Liepāja, the opening round of the 2016 FIA European Rally Championship, will not take place as scheduled because of unforeseen weather conditions.

A Q&A with Raimonds Strokšs, the Event Director, follows..

http://www.fiaerc.com/erc-qa-raimonds-strokss/

[Mirek]

So why did the drivers complain?

If the organizers wanted to do an event for everybody they shall have not opted for ERC and made rules themselves. However they did enter ERC and therefore they had to respect rules of ERC. Simple as that.

[sindroms]

"Early autumn" (September?)could be a new date for Rally Liepaja.

[PLuto]

"Stupid" date as you call it already was from the beginning, some 30 years ago.
From an international point of view, all top crews (ok, except Skoda since 2014 and Peugeot ´till 2015, but e.g. Top 5 of final standings in 2015) were present, so I don´t agree about this, and also Mirek stated this when discussion arose around announcement of the end of the rally. The big difference to other ERC rallies was the dying local scene.

By the way, organizers

Sorry, but also in last years there were missing 10-15 crews who were thinking about start, but in not so stupid date. And most of competitors doing ERC were unhappy with date of this event. It is one of the reasons why czech championship was going out of Janner and also why number and level of competitors were decreasing year by year. Sorry, this is fact. I am in contact with most of the teams competing/thinking about competition in ERC so I know a lot of things about this issue...

[PLuto]

Rally postponed to a later date in 2016... as what kind of rally, gravel ?

For sure it will not be winter rally, but gravel rally.

[Sulland]

No, but they are resposible for the calendar and rules. Firstly, they ruined Janner Rally with their stupid rules, now they chose a rally in Liepaja, that cannot be organized without snow. Are they serious?

Can of course be run, but if they do that they will have to repair the roads for hundred of thousands of euros, and that is not in the budget I guess!

[bluuford]

Wheatherwise. This winter has been extremely cold in Baltics. We had many days more than -30 degrees in many places and Northern Estonia got a lot of snow (also coastal areas in Latvia). However, one very extreme strom hit us a few days ago when windspeed reached over 30 m/s near to Tallinn (last night), it is very unusual. Very strong wind, very heavy rain and more than +5 took all the snow. Well, actually the amount of snow was not too big as it was falled with very low temperatures, that means it was not dense and that snow melts quickly.
So, Liepaja organizers are doing very good job but as I have said it before, it is organized in wrong location. It is too close to the coast. All recent years have been very near of cancelling the rally. In ideal world, this rally should take place near Estonian-Russina border, in NE Latvia. But this is not the place where the money is. Money is in Liepaja and Ventspils harbour and in this region, so, rally is there. This winter has been so extreme that I must say that if this rally would have have taken place in NE Latvia, it might have been cancelled as well (very big risk), but in most years, it would have been very safe. So, let me remind you, we are not living in ideal world..
Rally Sweden, looks very safe right now. Cyclones are mostly passing it from the south and west and temperature vareis between a few plus degrees and a lot of minus degrees, that means, we should have almost ideal conditions for rally (very solid ice-base for the roads). Maybe less snow and snowbanks but ice layer should be much thicker than during very cold winters.