[WRC] News & Rumours 2019

[AnttiL]

In the end those roads didn't make it safer since they were still very fast with hidden rocks and tree stumps in the grass, trees also even closer. Also poor viewing for spectators making them stay closer to the road.

The biggest accident of the rally happened near the end of Oittila on a medium wide road that was super fast, with a Subaru hitting a tree. The WRC driver crashes happened also on similar roads (Lappi in Laukaa, Neuville in Äänekoski) although Mikkelsen's crash in Ässämäki was on a slower section, but the trees weren't close. I don't recall any crashes on the smallest and slowest roads, but then again none on the fastest and widest ones either (except stuff like Katsuta in Urria or Ogier in Jukojärvi last year, both with a some sort of issue with the car).

EDIT: Forgot Veiby's crashes in 2017 and 2018, on the same piece of road, also a medium wide but fast road.

And speaking of spectators, I've seen onboard footage of specators standing on the road even on stages like Pihlajakoski which isn't really a narrow path in the woods, or slow. Some people just will always want to see more than they're allowed.

The problem with roads is that they're not consistent. You might have a couple of kilometres of perfect road but to use that, you need to go through a hyper fast or a very narrow section to get a proper stage, and it's especially tricky with 20+ km stages. Ouninpohja is a perfect example of this.

I remember reading that some drivers actually liked Finland’s new roads and prefered them than using chicanes like in 2017.

https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/1...g-stage-safety

Basically they said that small roads are better than chicanes, but they feel the fast wide roads are safer to drive. I think it's true for the current WRC cars with a lot of power and aero and lots of side impact padding, but once we go to the lower classes, the safety drops considerably on the fast sections where the top speeds can be as high as on WRC cars.