Quote Originally Posted by Francis44 View Post
I think it is time to face the music and admit the sport as it is now is not very marketable, we can't have 3-5 day events, it's just not possible to gather the interest of a new audience in this format.

The problem is not the regulations, see how WEC, Dakar and even F1 is doing.

We need a 1 day full of special stages with good quality live coverage. F1 does so well exactly because of that, a simple race of 90 minutes and that's it, onto the next. The hardcore follow all the FP and Qualifying, but thats marginal compared to race viewership.

But anyway tell that to the fanatics of long stages and 1000km events.
I thought we're having that right now, essentially, with the COVID-shortened events. Friday has shakedown and maybe 1-2 stages. Saturday is a full day with a live TV stage, and Sunday is a short day with the power stage finale on TV.

We cannot compare F1 methods with rallying because the sport operates differently, there's special stages with liaisons, which takes time, and the cameras have to follow the cars compared to a racing circuit where you can have one camera shooting all the laps at one sitting.

But if we want do use your F1 analogy, power stage is "the 90 minute race". At the end you get the results and although the overall situation rarely changes, you get the excitement of the power stage points.