[WRC] News & rumours (part IV) 2016

[GravelBen]

Well, let's think a little over it, most of the challengers last only 2 days max before rally2 comes in. The major part of them even on 1st day. So, FIA wants to make the rally more thrilling, without any artificial competition as is the starting order. I think it's not such a bad idea.

Are you seriously claiming that 'most challengers' are out of events and rally2 on the first day? How often does that actually happen?

By the same argument they should reduce the Le Mans and Nurburgring 24h races to 24 minutes because thats all you need to see who can do the fastest laps, and by the end of 24h only a few cars are in contention for the lead.

I think you have the wrong sport, if you want a short sprint and think endurance is 'artificial competition' then rallying isn't for you and you should stick to hillclimbs.

As for making it 'more thrilling' - if a driver has lost some time, a shorter rally means less chance to catch up and compete for position so there is less reason to push hard, and more likely they will avoid the risk and settle for whatever points they have. That is one of the reasons drivers often play it safe on the final day with the current format, because it isn't long enough to give them real hope of making up time differences.

[Zeakiwi]

With rallies down to 250km, are the FIA hoping attract 100 percent electric vehicles to the WRC?

[Rally Power]

Maybe we, hardcore rally fans, are a bit radical defending the sport identity. Almost every time a change is proposed we get suspicious and tend to criticize it by saying this time “they” have gone too far and “they” are killing rallysport…

Actually, the sport history is made of ups and downs and it seems were getting close to one of its highest eras. 5 manus involved in WRC, several countries in a cue to get a series event and lots of young drivers coming from different parts of the world, are promising signs.

Yep, authorities doesn’t praise enough the sport heritage, we still don’t have proper mainstream media coverage at WRC (will we ever have it?), FIA’s car homologation system is too manu centered, private tuners are missed on a regional and national level, but we must admit there’s a constant evolution and we’re far from rally worst era, the late 00’s, when nobody seemed to care and the rally world was left to stagnation.

Perhaps it’s too late to get the old endurance rally format back; perhaps we don’t need it anymore. A globalised sprint series seems to be the way to go; eventually we’ll embrace it, but it needs to be implemented in a more balanced way. Fingers crossed!

[Toyoda]

Maybe we, hardcore rally fans, are a bit radical defending the sport identity. Almost every time a change is proposed we get suspicious and tend to criticize it by saying this time “they” have gone too far and “they” are killing rallysport…

Actually, the sport history is made of ups and downs and it seems were getting close to one of its highest eras. 5 manus involved in WRC, several countries in a cue to get a series event and lots of young drivers coming from different parts of the world, are promising signs.

Yep, authorities doesn’t praise enough the sport heritage, we still don’t have proper mainstream media coverage at WRC (will we ever have it?), FIA’s car homologation system is too manu centered, private tuners are missed on a regional and national level, but we must admit there’s a constant evolution and we’re far from rally worst era, the late 00’s, when nobody seemed to care and the rally world was left to stagnation.

Perhaps it’s too late to get the old endurance rally format back; perhaps we don’t need it anymore. A globalised sprint series seems to be the way to go; eventually we’ll embrace it, but it needs to be implemented in a more balanced way. Fingers crossed!

Agreed to an extent
I think there is room for a variation in rally lengths, endurance 3 to 4 days or all nighter as well as sprint events, the beauty of rally is the variation in conditions, why not have a flexible format that can be manipulated by each host country...or not

[AL14]

The average rally fan is just a hairpin pleb or a chav culture low life who cannot distinguish rallying from the antics of ken block, so no wonder the FIA dwants to shorten events and add stupid ideas in, in their mind they want to make rallying into an americanised extreme sport.

On the other hand we have autistic old school rallying guys who prefer events with 100000 stages and slow motion action like in the 70s where everything was over with driving after 3 stages and the overall winner was the one whose car was not into a million pieces after the event.

I hate you both equally and you should return to your caves and leave rallying alone.

I would have quoted this if it would not have been offensive for some of you here.
But I totally agree for the rest.
As long as we will have rally fans that don't understand and enjoy the meaning of the sport and confuse it with gymkhanas and truck races this is what we have as results.

Anyway, let also see the good. 13 more countries want to enter WRC, we have more factory teams, the situation not that bad.

[stefanvv]

I think you have the wrong sport, if you want a short sprint and think endurance is 'artificial competition' then rallying isn't for you and you should stick to hillclimbs.

Where in my post I wrote endurance is 'artificial competition'?

[raybak]

I had an idea, with all these so called new events why don't we run them as WRC2 as the main event. The rotation events such as Australia and NZ run one year as WRC2 the main game and WRC the next. WRC can turn up to win the event outright but not score points.

Ray

[sindroms]

What do we want see in rally as a rally fans? Spectacular driving, attacking style driving, fight till the end.
The longer a rally fan I'm, the more I began to think about the money spent/spectacularly ratio. Let's be honest - how many drivers in WRC event we can call "fast and/or spectacular"? As from me - WRC and WRC2 top crews and a few late runners which usually are locals. If they are going trim event to 1.5 day I will start to ask question to myself - is this show worth to my spent money? What I will get for it?
Rally doesn't start and end with WRC only. The further away, the more I think about visiting very strong national events - Barum Rally, Ypres Rally, some Finland rallies, Saaremaa Rally (already doing this for years)... Up to 140 crews, most of them locals and half of them knowing local roads and driving in "we are not taking hostages" style, results are tight and guys are fighting till the end in each class. What would be loss for me? Yes, no top machinery - WRC, anything else?

[jbmarcus21]

New 2017 provisional WRC calendar include 12 rounds... and maybe 13th 14th with China or Poland or Turkey .. Corsica will run in April => http://bit.ly/2dDkLRr

[BleAivano]

New 2017 provisional WRC calendar include 12 rounds... and maybe 13th 14th with China or Poland or Turkey .. Corsica will run in April => http://bit.ly/2dDkLRr

Source: https://twitter.com/Becsywecsy/statu...79901856608256