Quote Originally Posted by GravelBen View Post
Gives advantage to drivers who can memorise a short stage really well rather than those who can read the road well the first time though. Less rally and more rallysprint, isn't there enough repeating the same stages in WRC already? I'd rather see more new stages than see who has memorised an old stage best after driving it 50 times in their career.

Road order advantage/disadvantage usually seems to balance out reasonably even over a season and often depends more on weather than anything else, where is the unfairness there? Is it just because certain drivers whinge whenever it doesn't give them an advantage?
In some rallies (like sweden and turkey and some other) are really unfair for first cars on the road. Winning in Monte Carlo = having no chance in sweden due to road order.

There is no perfect solution for road order problem. Adding 20 km long qualifying stage to gravel rally still makes it unfair for first 3-4 cars on the road , (and unfair for last cars on tarmac) stage). Shakedown qualifying is in my mind the best solution for the current dilemma.
2nd Option is to make a power stage like qualifying stage (still quite short) on tarmac and do it just after shakedown.