[WRC] News & Rumours (part V) 2017

[N.O.T]

why post worthless news from the autism land ?

[Watson]

why post worthless news from the autism land ?

Question back to you: Why post worthless autism from news land?

You need a new catchphrase.

[Simmi]

So at then end was there anything related to WRC news in MN today?

Plenty of Sardinia preview stuff but not really anything of massive interest. Like a couple of others have said, Rally GB organisers talking about using some tiny tarmac sections of stage to link forests together. Nothing that is really going to impact the average fan. And obviously not anything that will be incorporated this season.

[MrJan]

Do organisers not pass the excess on to competitors for insurance in the UK? For example in NZ we have event insurance, but the competitor is liable for the excess, which is normally about $3500, so still worthwhile if you hit a power pole or a house, otherwise not too many claims.

This will give you an idea https://www.msauk.org/assets/405-409...ppendix2-1.pdf Excess is is payable by the organising club and normally £425, however obviously Mull was considered to be a special case and presumably the amount asked for by the insurers was deemed too high for the club to risk. Remember that clubs are mostly small and volunteer lead. In theory they could provide in the regs that competitors would be responsible for the excess, but if an incident occured then it would be up to the club to first pay the excess to the MSA/insurers. They could then try to recover that money from the competitor but that wouldn't necessarily be a quick process. If the excess was, say £5,000, then there's a chance that the club wouldn't have the kind of money required to actually pay.

You also have to remember that the current 'climate' of rallying in the UK is in a pretty precarious situation in regard to liability. The incident on the Jim Clark in 2014 (and subsequent inquiry) mean that the insurers are particularly jumpy. I suspect

I don't blame for anyone posting the tweets here because they didn't really say it was non-WRC news, instead it was implied by talking about "big bad news for every rally fan".

It's a UK publication so would angle everything towards UK fans, hardly surprising.

[AndyRAC]

Well said Jan; it may not interest a lot of people on here, understandable I suppose - but this is a major UK rally story; the Mull Rally is probably the best event in the UK, and the reason for it's cancellation is possibly quite serious for other events.

[Munkvy]

This will give you an idea https://www.msauk.org/assets/405-409...ppendix2-1.pdf Excess is is payable by the organising club and normally £425, however obviously Mull was considered to be a special case and presumably the amount asked for by the insurers was deemed too high for the club to risk. Remember that clubs are mostly small and volunteer lead. In theory they could provide in the regs that competitors would be responsible for the excess, but if an incident occured then it would be up to the club to first pay the excess to the MSA/insurers. They could then try to recover that money from the competitor but that wouldn't necessarily be a quick process. If the excess was, say £5,000, then there's a chance that the club wouldn't have the kind of money required to actually pay.

You also have to remember that the current 'climate' of rallying in the UK is in a pretty precarious situation in regard to liability. The incident on the Jim Clark in 2014 (and subsequent inquiry) mean that the insurers are particularly jumpy. I suspect



It's a UK publication so would angle everything towards UK fans, hardly surprising.

Thanks for the explanation, I am surprised you don't have to pay your own excess as a competitor, but I get what you mean about the club liability if there was a lot of crashes - we certainly have that risk here in NZ as we are a little smaller, but have quite a bit of motorsport for our size. In NZ you would I imagine simply loose your motorsport license if you didn't pay the clubs, so a fairly good incentive?

Hopefully this doesn't continue to happen!

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Getting reasonable insurance cover and other rising costs have also been a big issue over in Ireland. There has been some progress in a recent meeting between competitors and Motorsport Ireland (see link) but many Irish events and the sport in general remain in a very precarious position.

"even if the cost of entry fees drop next year or the year after, it will be too late as some competitors are beginning to sell their cars and are quitting the sport."

http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/o...ux-450931.html

[MrJan]

In NZ you would I imagine simply loose your motorsport license if you didn't pay the clubs, so a fairly good incentive?

The same would probably happen here too.

I suspect that the genuine problem is that the excess being asked is far more than anything the MSA have had previously, to the extent that even an organisation as the MSA aren't willing to even underwrite the excess. The decision wouldn't have been taken lightly and as Andy says it could possibly signal future issues for other events (which is why MN consider it a big deal).

[RAS007]

Nope. BREAKING NEWS - some rally got cancelled in some armpit in Britain that noone south of the channel ever heard of. BUY A COPY NOW!

Not really fair. That said, while it was certainly bad news, it certainly wasn't "big" news "touching every rally fan" and Evans was quite wrong and misleading to set the story up that way.

[RAS007]

Chicanes to be added at Poland and NORF...Just a bet.

This would be big news, and bad news.