Wrc+

[ouvreur]

What's to be gained from scrapping it? Itineraries were always long days for crews and mechanics, isn't that part of the game? And what's really different? Top 15 cars don't overlap?

'Long days' in the 'good old days' at least meant decent mileage. Now we've got the 'clover leaf' format (despite which, we're seeing an increasing number of events not running midday services on some days), all double-used stages, long delays (especially on gravel rallies with 3 or 4 minute gaps) between one stage finishing and another starting for Rally1 cars, and taking 12 hours to cover 120 competitive km. All to suit an All Live format. Do away with that, and how much more interesting could itineraries be? How many more opportunities for interesting things to happen?

Consider this: alllive is not the flagship entertainment package we think of it. The cameras and reporters are there anyway to gather everything for the purpose of highlights and TV live stages, and those on the car are for stewards and safety surveillance in Rally HQ. It's their jobs to stay on top of everything even without all live, so broadcasting live is squeezing extra value, is easy and monetisable.

So, let the stage-side cameras continue to serve that purpose. No problem for me. It's not like the shots we get from them are ever really that interesting / capture anything dramatic happening. You've seen one Rally1 car sliding around a medium-speed corner, you've seen them all. Most interesting external footage comes from 'fan cam' on social media. Let the onboard cameras continue to be broadcast live. Absolutely fine. But manipulating itineraries and event formats to be able to show that stuff live just does not make sense to me.

It was never aimed at being watched all the way through from start to finish by subscribers, there's no prizes for doing that and there are off buttons. So if you're asking yourself "why am I watching?", turn it off once in a while maybe? Typically, rallies get less entertaining as it progresses, so cut Sunday's stages out for a start and catch up on the powerstage. That once-in-fifty-rallies event where the rally leader bins it by mistake on a Sunday really ain't worth it to say you saw it LIVE! Second step is go further when there isn't a race on, stick just to the live TV stages on Saturday, then maybe also Friday. Suddenly the commentators and stage ends aren't repetitive but informative.

I'm not asking myself that. I don't sit glued to the screen all weekend, often it's just on in the background, but I like to know what's going on, and in the now-absence of rally radio, it's the only option. What I'm asking is, does it offer us - and indeed the sport - anything that justifies the impact broadcasting All Live has on itineraries?

If your suggestion to make something (that only takes place once a month) seem more interesting is for me to just consume less of it, that tells me there's an issue with some part of the product, not my ability to feel excited by things...

I didn't bother with Saturday at all for Estonia after gauging from the Friday leaderboard, scrolled though the chat here to see if there was much to catch up on. No, lol. But you betcha though, when a Loeb v Ogier at Monte comes along you'll be wishing you could see it (all) instead of listening to a chap on the radio speculating and hypothesising.

We get the speculating and hypothesising (more often than not incorrectly) with All Live anyway!

By all means, keep Sunday as an 'all live' day. That's the day the greater number of people have completely free anyway, and generally it needs to be a shorter day to enable teams to pack up. But I'll ask again - what does the sport gain from having Fridays and Saturdays broadcast live in their entirety, that justifies the dull, over-long itineraries?