[WRC] 80. Rally Poland 2024

[mknight]

Reason for the puncture https://x.com/ewrcresults/status/180...C1kV5QC61vX5Xg

Interesting how massive it looks front the outside compared to how innocent it looked on the onboard shown on the stream.

[Corcaíoch]

A real shame for McErlean, his pace has really improved this year, I wans't expecting it to be honest but great to see!

[jonkka]

I wonder what ruleset you are following. Definitely not the current one.

Old man with old brains and old thoughts. You got me... nif:

[Rallyper]

Oh dear, what a sh***y ending of the PS...

Edit: Ott just confirmed my thoughts.

[WRCStan]

I would say:
9.1 CRITERIA FOR PRIORITY DRIVERS

FIRST PRIORITY DRIVERS (P1) Drivers of Rally1 cars complying with the 2024 Appendix J, Art. 262 when

- Entered by a Manufacturer or a WRC Team and nominated to score points or
- Endorsed by the FIA.

So i would say that as he is on the entry list as P1, it must have been agreed with the FIA, who i guess are also curious how the car would perform.

It doesn’t look like there were national cars allowed to enter the rally, so maybe they used the above as a bit of a fudge?

I didn't think either of us were on about Sesks. At first you said non-priority crews can't score points, that statement alone I didn't agree with.

But on Sesks: it isn't a bit of a fudge, it's in black and white.

[trykmann]

The uncomfortable silence after Tänaks comments on Rallytv was funny.

[mknight]

The uncomfortable silence after Tänaks comments on Rallytv was funny.

Missed the comment, what did he say?

[Rallyper]

Missed the comment, what did he say?

"Shame for the sport having such stages with shicane after shicane... and Poland did it again."

[Morte66]

The main reason for adding hybrid was because the manus (Ford and Hyundai) demanded it to stay in WRC. More precisely demanded that the cars will be hybrid without caring about the hybrid specs at all.

The main goal of the rule set then done by FIA was to keep the car behavior as similar as without it, to be able to use the same petrol engines and to keep the costs on same level as 2017 cars (looks like the last part failed).

So the hybrid was added as a autonomous automatic unit that the drivers can't directly control, with a small battery and even more importantly strictly limited levels of energy use (limiting the amount of regen as well).
The goal was never to make the car as fast as possible or to make the hybrid radically change the driving.

Yep. Now that I look back, I wonder whether it was all worth it, and I think "Maybe". On the one hand, it pushed costs up and didn't do a whole lot. On the other hand, we still have a 2.5-team championship instead of a 1.5 or 1.0-team championship. That's assuming Ford and Hyundai weren't bluffing, which I am willing to consider.

And would leaving the hybrids off bring in other teams? Skoda wasn't going to enter either way. Citroen was verging on leaving, not joining. As for local importers building cars on space frames and so forth, I think it would take a lot more than dropping hybrids to make that happen (maybe 2027...).

So I can't blame anyone who felt that "it seemed like a good idea at the time". Desperate times, desperate measures.

[Eli]

Yep. Now that I look back, I wonder whether it was all worth it, and I think "Maybe". On the one hand, it pushed costs up and didn't do a whole lot. On the other hand, we still have a 2.5-team championship instead of a 1.5 or 1.0-team championship. That's assuming Ford and Hyundai weren't bluffing, which I am willing to consider.

And would leaving the hybrids off bring in other teams? Skoda wasn't going to enter either way. Citroen was verging on leaving, not joining. As for local importers building cars on space frames and so forth, I think it would take a lot more than dropping hybrids to make that happen (maybe 2027...).

So I can't blame anyone who felt that "it seemed like a good idea at the time". Desperate times, desperate measures.

To make it short, like many people said here, that’s what happens when you have no clear vision for the sport, that’s how it looks, dragging their feet, not making decisions on time…etc.