2024 WRC News & Rumours

[Tauri_J]

The Rally winner is the one with the overall fastest time come Saturday evening, however if he must finish the rally on Sunday to claim that win.

That is not true, if it is....my god this is the stupidest thing they have ever done.

[becher]

I think we will still see Sunday cruising, for example driver A is 1th on Satarday, cruises on Sunday to save tyres and then wins the powerstage he'll get 18 points + points for anything between 3rd and 5th on Sunday and 4 or 5 points on the powerstage). It would be hilarious to see that.

Anyway great way to make the sport unattractive for everyone, explaining this to casual fans will be fun and super engaging.

[Tauri_J]

As far as I read, overall time is stopped on Saturday evening. Sunday starts from zero:
For the World Rally Championships for Manufacturers, for
Drivers and for Co-Drivers, points will be awarded for each
rally taking into account the general classification after
Saturday (with all time penalties accrued until and including
the final time control on Saturday) according to the following
scale....
...
To score points, the crew must be classified in the Final Classification of the rally. If a crew is not classified in the Final
Classification of the rally, the next Competitor(s) will be moved
up to score points.
...

For the World Rally Championships for Manufacturers,
for Drivers and for Co-Drivers, additional points as per the
following scale will be awarded according to an accumulated
general classification of Sunday only, comprising the part
from the first time control after the overnight regroup up to
and including the final time control of the competition element
of the rally (with all time penalties accrued in this part of the
competition).

Yeah I read all about it but it clearly needs clarifycations.

Right now I understand that overall time still decides rally winner.
Rally winner ≠ max/more points than 2nd position or 3rd etc
I mean you could still win the rally(with max points) finishing like 6th on saturday evening and everyone in front of you goes full banzai on sunday and crashes out. You move up from saturdays standing to 1st and will be fastest on sunday (7 points) + PS points.

Anyway my point is it will get super complicated and this point system has so many variations and will be hard to understand for fans. Like you said it would be much easier if it was just extra points for sunday.

[Eli]

That is not true, if it is....my god this is the stupidest thing they have ever done.

If you read bluuford's post you will see it is (unfortunately).

[HKSjbg]

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!

[focus206]

When actual rally fans have so many questions about the new rules, imagine the casual fans. Up there they are obsessed in their belief that fans hate boring rallies/races and want excitement, but they fail to understand that fans, no matter how casual, hate complicated and unnatural formats even more.

[Tauri_J]

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.

Nah you would lose more fans, especially casual. Power stage is fine as it is right now. Most of the drivers go flatout there and it is really good to watch on TV.

[Kras]

This will make sundays even worse. As some have already mentioned, drivers will cruise to keep their saturday points.

If they are really dead set on using this format, they must remove the superrally rule, or not require the saturday winner to finish the rally to get points.

As it stands now:
- The driver who was the fastest over 2/3 of the rally needs to finish the whole rally to get 18 points.
- The driver who was the fastest over 1/3 of the rally can be someone who binned it on the first corner. He can then get 7+5 points on sunday.

I also expect people who lose time to mistakes and punctures on the first day to just cruise on saturday as theres not enought kms to catch up and all it much more probable that some of the guys fighting for saturday points will bin it and you get free points.

These changes are so stupid, it's like a bad joke

[doubled1978]

Yeah I read all about it but it clearly needs clarifycations.

Right now I understand that overall time still decides rally winner.
Rally winner ≠ max/more points than 2nd position or 3rd etc
I mean you could still win the rally(with max points) finishing like 6th on saturday evening and everyone in front of you goes full banzai on sunday and crashes out. You move up from saturdays standing to 1st and will be fastest on sunday (7 points) + PS points.

Anyway my point is it will get super complicated and this point system has so many variations and will be hard to understand for fans. Like you said it would be much easier if it was just extra points for sunday.

On this I think I agree, extra points on Sunday for whoever is fastest over the last leg would be more simple, and there would be no potential confusion over who ‘won’ the rally. If we have a situation where Saturday leader gets a puncture on Sunday and someone else has lowest overall time but Saturday leader wins the rally, that sounds a bit daft.

[bluuford]

Yeah I read all about it but it clearly needs clarifycations.

Right now I understand that overall time still decides rally winner.
Rally winner ≠ max/more points than 2nd position or 3rd etc
I mean you could still win the rally(with max points) finishing like 6th on saturday evening and everyone in front of you goes full banzai on sunday and crashes out. You move up from saturdays standing to 1st and will be fastest on sunday (7 points) + PS points.

Anyway my point is it will get super complicated and this point system has so many variations and will be hard to understand for fans. Like you said it would be much easier if it was just extra points for sunday.

Overall time counting ends on Saturday evening as stated in regulations. For me that opens the situation that some drivers cars maybe only want to take rally wins (very good and high publicity). For example if conditions in Sweden are really bad, you can use 6 new tyres each loop. you run out of good tyres for Sunday and then it does not matter, as long as you dont go OTL, you can finish Sunday like hours behind, but you are still rally winner by crawling across the finish line.. Like this year in Sardegna, soft tyre was the fastest but there was not enough of them and Sunday was expected to be very bad. Most of drivers run out of softs by Sunday. So, you can now do it, win the rally by Saturday evening and cruise whole Sunday and even loose 5 min in each stage and you are still winner of the rally and get all publicity, despite the fact that maybe someone collects 27 points and you as a winner collect 18 points. So, theoretically it opens the window that you win all the rallies, you get 13 times very high publicity from each rally, but you are not winning the Championship. I dont know if it is what we want?