Rally Portugal 2016

[seb_sh]

My suspicion is that the main reason for this is Ogiers character. For him it isn't enough to win the championship, he wants to beat every record ever set, to be the greatest of all time (and we all know what that means), and he sees that this will be impossible if these rules continue, and I would suspect that he has even threatened to quit rallying all together if this does not change, and I suspect Ogiers tuntrums after Portugal lead Capito to have to react, to show Ogier that he stands 100% behind him.

I think this hits the nail on the head. Basically you can talk about records before and after Loeb. Before if you won more than 3 rallies in a season you were hot stuff and the top drivers had around 25 wins. Loeb completely rewrote the record books. Now Ogier wants to emulate that and while he will win another title, he will not get 10 wins in a season so that's why he is complaining. All his career he has compared himself to Loeb and for him, so far, Loeb has been the only real rival.

Now regardless of Ogier, road order rules have kept changing back and forth so much I can't even remember all of them. The one we have now initially seems the most unbalanced but in fact it makes for the best show. It disadvantages the championship leader on some rallies so potentially tightens the championship and it sets up day 3 for potential come-backs from first couple of drivers who have been disadvantaged by sweeping. The running order also makes sense to the fans on the first days and then creates a nice crescendo for the TV Power Stage.

So yeah that's how I see it, I think the system is not so bad for the WRC. It's only bad for Ogier beating Loeb's records. Maybe others like Meeke and Paddon will start to challenge him so he can have something else to focus on than Loeb.

In reality you will never have a perfect system, as others have pointed out the difference between dry gravel, wet gravel, dusty gravel, snowy tarmac, dry tarmac, wet tarmac is so wide no system will ever be "fair". But rally is not about "fair" it's about adapting to the conditions and extracting the best result you can, it's about unpredictable things and it's about being able to put together a full season and win the title.