[WRC] News & Rumours (part V) 2017

[dodge33cymru]

@sollitt - you make a very fair point, as did the gentleman making the argument about Group N cars - I accept your points and if the drivers complained then it's fair enough to consider.

The other thing here is the image that it portrays. They could have been a lot more subtle about it but, instead, the Toyota winning story was top of the motorsports press for a couple of days and then two days later it was headlined by this article.

I have friends who have an interest in cars and sometimes racing but don't follow rallying and even they read about the FIA saying the cars are going too fast. If the stages need slowing, fair enough, but it could have been handled in a much, much better way IMO.

[SubaruNorway]

The only comments I saw in regard to it was a driver (forget who, possibly Paddon or Meeke) saying that they didn't think the stage was dangerous, just boring.

And the FIA are bound to take a bit of negativity on this, they've introduced faster cars with more aero but are now looking to limit them.

And Ogier only said it was super fast and hard to find confidence on TV at least, it's just a couple corners that are a bit nasty if you go off. Other than that the stage looked fine. The way they run Vargåsen now it should be possible to run the old Torsby/Thorntorp stage on the same day instead of Knon though, making the rally a bit more compact.

[A FONDO]

Every safety feature from rollcage, belts, helmet to fire extinguisher has to be FIA certified. So every car is supposed to have the same basic safety standards as the WRC.

This is like saying all tyres are round and black

[Mirek]

I wonder how many of you slagging the FIA over this issue have ever driven a stage at over 130kph average. Or listened to competitors views on the matter.

There are stages which aren't any superfast with such average and others which are. The nature of stages in various countries, regions etc. differ a lot and the average speed alone is uselful value only for comparing very similar stages (let's say two Swedish ones but not one from Sweden and one from Germany).

You can have a stage with relatively low average speed due to many junctions but otherwise extremely fast (Ypres for example) but also stages which are just fluent without any junctions at all with higher average speed. Also typical for Central Europe - You can make average speed way lower by setting a slow technical passing through every village on the stage but if You cut the stage to the parts outside of the villages alone the average speed would easily reach 140 km/h. That's reality of the geographical conditions in some countries.

[mousti]

Neuville wins 18/18 stages of Legends Boucles de Spa. A class or 2 above everyone else..

Onboard with Neuville

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn4f...ature=youtu.be

[jacko]

Kevin Abbring with co-pilot (!) Pieter Tsjoen in the Belgian championship with a Peugeot 208 T16 !
Wonder what that will do with his connection with Hyundai. Because he was not at Sweden and there's not a programm at all at the moment @Hyundai for him i think Kevin does the only right thing: driving rally's again and hopefully he will get another chance at a factory-team somewhere but at the moment i only think it's Hyunday itself or PSA for possibilities.

[BigWorm]

Neuville wins 18/18 stages of Legends Boucles de Spa. A class or 2 above everyone else..

Onboard with Neuville

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn4f...ature=youtu.be

He didn't crash out on the last stage of saturday! Should bode well for Mexico

[jbmarcus21]

Marcus Grönholm debuts test with Skoda Motorsport => http://bit.ly/2llVYCl

[Simmi]

Marcus Grönholm debuts test with Skoda Motorsport => http://bit.ly/2llVYCl

Seen a couple of Finnish media guys on Twitter linking this test and Gronholm's presence to a Skoda WRC return. What do people think?

[Andre Oliveira]

First test of Polo R5 life