56. Renties Ypres Rally Belgium 2021

[mknight]

https://youtu.be/tDsqZAD5LKc

Beautiful

Places are nice...but the spectators right on the outsides of kicking 150+kph corners are surely immortal.

[AnttiL]

https://www.fia.com/news/wrc-t-neuvi...-championships

[Eli]

Ypres has an agreement with the promotor to be the next year and year after to be in the ERC championship and then eventually again on the WRC Calendar.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn M2007J3SG met Tapatalk

Just like you said: https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/ypres...c-return-plan/

So not in the WRC until 2024 at the very least. Hopefully the world will be more of an open place without Covid, fingers crossed!

[MentalParadox]

We had only one encounter with Michèle. No walking on the stage 30 minutes before the start. I'm always very compliant because it goes quicker that way. Once Michèle is gone, in your case over the bridge, it's back to plan A. There are 10-15 minutes left after she's gone. It's quite a silly job if you ask me. I hope you didn't actually leave the stage!

Marshalls and police were okay around us. Marshalls are volunteers and there's a lot of difference in their judgment and form of authority. Today on the parts of the real stages around Spa we could do whatever we wanted. Yesterday we had some Dutch marshalls who forbade people crossing the road to go to their car to get to the next stage. Police came to get the identities of those who did. Ridiculous. Marshalls and police tend to get crazy if there are many spectators, they feel challenged and/or something just happened (Katsuta's crash in this case). There were police officers from far away with no experience with rally. I translated something for an officer because she couldn't speak French (ridiculous as well), and after that they hung around and made some cellphone videos. Most marshalls were very okay.

So yeah, you win some, you lose some. But if the organisation tells you that you can stand anywhere on the stage at 10 metres (except the forbidden zones), then you're entitled to do that. Yes sir, yes ma'am, but after you're gone, I'm doing what I want. Of course I've seen spectators in very stupid spots as well.

I left the stage, as she ordered, and positioned myself in a nearby field with plenty of other people. Seconds later after Michèle left, hordes of other spectators went back on the stage in the direction I wanted to go. Damn me for being so obedient...

"I translated something for an officer because she couldn't speak French (ridiculous as well)..."
Why ridiculous? Ypres is in Flander and people in Flanders speak Dutch. The only cops who need to speak French in that area are the French cops across the border in Westouter-Boeschepe. I saw that Katsuta crash happen on the horizon, by the way. We were about a K up the stage from that point. The ambulance drove by us and it got me pretty worried for Taka.

"Yesterday we had some Dutch marshalls who forbade people crossing the road to go to their car to get to the next stage. Police came to get the identities of those who did. Ridiculous."
I assume Flemish marshalls, because I don't see why there'd be Dutch cops in Belgium, the Netherlands being quite far away. Yeah, the field I was forced to stay in was separated from my car by the stage... Two cops showed up and started booking people who tried to cross the road. I needed to move on to the next stage (well, noon service in Ypres) so I had no choice but to wait until they were distracted, jump across and hide in a corn field until I was sure they stopped chasing... Quite the adventure, rallying...

[spiderem]

Am i the only one finding Oliver's end of stage boring and dull? He always says the things people want to hear, with no personality in my opinion... he has clearly been taught well for PR purposes.

[dupanton]

From me a few alternative comments about this rally.
I've participated as codriver. We where 38th overall after day 1 and 2nd in RC5 with our Clio Rally5. Unfortunately we retired saturday morning with a broken driveshaft. We restarted on Sunday to collect a few points in the clio trophy for our championship but finished last but one overall.

1) Katsuta crash: there is a bump in the road just before the fast left hander. It developped in the last year or so, wasn't there before. In a local rally 2 months ago, few drivers crashed there as well, although it was in the other direction

2) Fourmaux crash: there was dirt on the road in that corner. There was a field "exit" just at corner entry. There was nothing before the corner, just in the corner. I even read the farmer crossed the road to go to another field 100m further between the RNC and first car, but not sure that's true. For sure, it wasn't there during recce.

3) Stages being all the same isn't actually true. The surface in Reninge is completely different than other stages, Watou is very bumpy, Zonnebeke has very slippery tarmac, Dikkebus a lot of gravel. Maybe it's not so apparent when watching WRC live, but driving the stages, you feel the different nature of stages.

4) Tsjoen crash: quite a bit of controverse in local news, about hitting that garage (not their house fortunately). But there was also a public chat between the owner and Pieter Tsjoen. Basically she says "shit happens" and thanks the police, organizers etc for the help she got. And she is glad nobody got seriously hurt. Pieter Tsjoen replied with an apology, praizes her understanding and says he will pay if there are any problems with insurance (which shouldn't be the case).
Very nice to see it can also be solved like that. There are no winners in such a crash.

5) Bedoret was just heartbroken. He broke the central driveshaft on the first day on sunday, having to continue with FWD. He and his codriver where litteraly crying in parc fermé. I had to do with them, motorsport can be so hard.

[Rallyper]

From what I've gathered from this forum, Gino Bux got 30 minutes of penalty for having his Alpine 7 Kg lighter... Ogier had his Yaris 1 Kg lighter and no penalty whatsoever because he's Ogier? Is this confirmed?

Remember MSport having thinner rearwindow on their Focus? Not even penalty. Excluded. Remember?

[AnttiL]

Thanks dupanton for the excellent report and congrats on completing the event (albeit in Super Rally)

3) Stages being all the same isn't actually true. The surface in Reninge is completely different than other stages, Watou is very bumpy, Zonnebeke has very slippery tarmac, Dikkebus a lot of gravel. Maybe it's not so apparent when watching WRC live, but driving the stages, you feel the different nature of stages. .

Watou bumpiness was clearly apparent from an old onboard video. Also we could add into this list the cobble stones on Kemmelberg (and the beginning of Mesen - Middelhoek). Zonnebeke is mostly a bit wider, and also some wide sections in Kemmelberg. Reninge is very flat, Westouer and Kemmelberg have some more hills.

I would say it's difficult to characterize the stages because they all mix so different roads and sections, and so many of them. You can only try to say which element the stage has more than some other element, or which element is not present on other stages. In most rallies you can usually say this stage is fast and this is technical, or this is 10 km fast and then 5 km technical, but not in Ypres, it changes at least every kilometre...

[AnttiL]

https://www.fia.com/news/wrc-t-neuvi...-championships

Huttunen's sparse comments were interesting...Hyundai has a lot of work to do with the car.

Q
Jari, looking back to this week, how do you feel about this rally and your WRC2 win here?
JH
Not in every stage but in most stages I had some problems. I am so lucky that I am here.

Q
Your teammate experienced similar issues yesterday, were you able to affect any fixes or was it a case of muscling your way through?
JH
It is difficult to drive but the fault is not so big. It is a small fault. When you don’t have any oil in the system, it is hard to drive.

But there's also improvements.

Q
Jari, how do you compare the new Hyundai Rally2 to the old Hyundai R5?
JH
I think it is a big step with everything working well. Particularly with the handling side. Now we are in the window. I think the gap is big.

[Rallyper]

I think we can rate Oliver's performance only through Friday. He made the fastest RC2 time on SS7 and didn't set a foot wrong, which is decent, but not enough for being one of the best drivers of the rally. By SS6 he was fifth in RC2, 25 seconds behind Suninen.

Meanwhile, Rossel did an amazing job in RC2, winning the class on his first start in the event.

You can rate people by other than speed (which we know Oliver has oc).

Man of the rally can be any strong performance or doing.

Oliver drove 85K without power steering. That´s what I valued most...