It would have been far simpler to scrap the power stage and tyre regs for Sundays. Call me an old fart but I preferred rallying when it was simply try and achieve the lowest overall time and you get points for that only.

It worked fine until Sebastien Loeb started his dominance and then the problem wasn’t the format, it was that one guy was better than everyone else around him. Regulating against someone or a manufacturer’s dominance is folly and never works, just creates mess.

I agree with the sentiment of ‘lets see how it unfolds this season before judging if it works’ but I always disagree with gimmicks to spice up motorsport and I judge this to be a gimmick. The problem with Sundays is cruising, so eliminate the cause of the cruising instead of adding another layer of contrived ‘show’ in the hope that every minute of every rally will be classic-not-to-be-missed moments.

Sport, and motorsport especially, works best when you allow the natural ebb and flow of competition from event to event. Without panicking that one even was a walkover and last time out was a classic, we didn’t know who was gonna win until the last stage and we’re ruined if the next round doesn’t deliver that exactly all over again!