New to WRC--How should I watch and what should I watch for

[kirungi okwogera]

...and to clarify...Championship leader goes first on Day 1, but thereafter sequencing is dependent upon time (15th fastest goes first)?

That's right. For a good while Ogier has complained as the order rules tend not to advantage the championship frontrunner as much as the championship frontrunner ever wants, but this coming year it isn't too bad being only one day in championship order.

I'd say also it's questionable how much of a leveler championship order really is when you consider the proportion of tarmac and gravel rallies is about even, considering that rain on gravel reverses the advantage, and that several if not most tarmac events get a lot of dirt/gravel pulled into the road due to corner cutting by early runners. So a lot of people have decided Ogier is a whiner due to having moaned about this so much at stage-ends. Of course, he still dominates, complaints or not.

I also want to underline the earlier point that UNLIKE damn near any other motorsport, in rallying the driver is (in my view) unquestionably the most important element in success. When you are doing 80 laps or something, everybody knows the exact brake points and lines, and the external elements of the car and the team come into play much more. When you are driving a corner twice or even once in a three day event, the variability in driving technique is much more visible. Fan videos of rallies demonstrate this very well. You can see plainly on any given corner who is driving clean, who is wild, who is aggressive/sideways losing time, who is braking too hard, whose brakes are fading. So much information is visible to the naked eye that in other sports has to be in telemetry or TV slo-mo analysis.

One car can be slightly faster, but it's not like with F1 where one team figures out a technical trick that makes their mid-level drivers suddenly turn into champions. Or at least it hasn't been - Sorry to say to a Toyota fan but Toyota Team Europe gave this method, known as "cheating" in rally, a try in the 90s. But I don't think that has worked in decades (maybe since the advent of 4WD) given the nature of the sport. In this way, despite the recent domination of the Sebastians, I think rally has the upper hand to many motorsports in being a proper meritocracy.

P.S. what a refreshing thread