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Thread: [WRC] Wales Rally GB 2019
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10th October 2019, 14:40 #25Senior Member
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...One stage Chambers holds up as a beacon of accomplishment is Oulton Park. And he's not wrong. It was superb. It sold out and delivered a great atmosphere. But shouldn't that credit be bound for circuit owner Jonathan Palmer and MotorSport Vision? Granted, there was no end of Motorsport UK input, but it was the MSV infrastructure that made it fly.
It would be great to see Oulton back next year, but if we go back to Liverpool, the event simply can't go there without a superspecial stage in the city.
Talking of Liverpool, last week was a case of right place, wrong time. Rally cars rolling onto the city's waterfront between 3pm and 4pm on a Thursday was, undoubtedly a source of much frustration to the office workers looking down from their desks. If the £200,000 needed to run a superspecial in Liverpool can't be found, then let's not bother having a token presence there.
Chambers has acknowledged this and is on the case, which is good. But, the more digging I did and the more calls I made, the more concerned I became about last week.
The last line of my defence of the event was to point out how much GB had evolved since 2013 and how much the administration had listened, taken criticism onboard and moved forward with it.
That brings me to quite possibly the biggest concern. Since former Rally GB managing director Ben Taylor's exit, it seems there's very little goodwill towards UK motorsport's governing body from the rallying world.
I walked the service parks - national and WRC - to gauge opinion last week and the overriding adjectives offered regarding UK motorsport chiefs wouldn't make for great reading.
The objects of such criticism may well blame Autosport for spreading negativity. In fairness, there's been no criticism of the event in the national media. As far as I could see, the event largely passed national newspapers by - although The Daily Telegraph did manage to squeeze the results of the event in between American ice hockey and the US Open Squash in Philadelphia.
And the objects of my criticism could point me in the direction of packed car parks and ticket sales 50% up on last year. That's a great achievement. But, as one of the organisers said: "Petter Solberg won't be there to save us next season."
The hike in sales when Solberg announced his participation spoke volumes. As did the movement of spectators out of stages once the 2003 world champion had passed by.
Now, I fully expect to be ostracised by some (again) for voicing an opinion shared by the WRC stakeholders, not to mention legions of fans and competitors out there.
I don't care. Call me a trouble-causer, call me what you want. But once you've done that, take a look in the mirror. And don't even think about a communal burying of heads in the sand.
Without getting all leftie, Rally GB doesn't belong to any individual in the UK motorsport hierarchy. It belongs to the thousands of rally fans out there. And we owe it to those people to make sure any steps we take are very big ones. Let's look for leaps - leaps would be good here.
Frustratingly, I've got all the way down here and I haven't even had time to talk about the increasingly toxic atmosphere among the teams, an atmosphere that is unnecessary and far from conducive to driving the world championship forward. But there's plenty of time, we'll come to that soon enough.
Like we'll come to the Rally GB sums and the challenge of balancing the books with diminishing investment from Wales and growing bills from WRC Promoter. Look out for rudimentary rally economics in the coming weeks.
For now, am I too late for last orders at the Broadway Boulevard? Pint, Pierre?
- Likes: AndyRAC (10th October 2019),er88 (10th October 2019),EstWRC (10th October 2019),Fast Eddie WRC (10th October 2019)


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