How do you see the future of rally?

[Brother John]

Rally is a strange animal in the motorsport family. It is taking place over a large area, and it is hard to follow who is winning and loosing, compared to track racing where you see them at least one time a lap. In rally you have to plan your rally day as a spectator.

So as it is today, you have to do a lot yourself tô follow a whole rally, and stay updated.

For a driver Rally has to be the ulimate challenge. We see that is easier to swap from rally to racing than the other way around. So the top rally drivers are among the best drivers on the planet.

Yet FIA has made WRC into being a car and manufacturer championship seen from their point of view. This compared to focus on the driver.

If you as a sponsor have money to spend, but do not know where to go.
I do not think I would bring my money to a sport where there are 4 guys that has the tools to win, and where many talented drivers have lost before the start even with the biggest talent and budget in the world.
These things are hard to explain to sponsors and also promotors.
Also the fact that one guy is winning almost every time, does not help to brin exitememt to sponsors and build bigger audiences.

WRCar need to be simplified, and cars blueprinted as formula Ford, so That a team can buy a winning car, build a winning team and have a fair chance of winning a round, and also the championshi
These are success factors that has worked for IRC.
The balance btw manufacturers and drivers need to shift towards the drivers, oterwise WRC will die.

If FIA hits bullseye with R5, that could be the turnaround for Rally. If the price is right, the car is a drivers car, and it is so tech simple so that a private team can manage it over time.
they also need to start using opportunities in internet tecnologies to spread it out live to the world!

If that happens, WRC will grow, and the job for a promotor will be easy - but there has to be a conductor in this process, otherwise it will fail (again) !

FIA need to act soon when one of the big ones plans to go to IRC !!!!!!!

@ SULLAND. The best post about the future of WRC that I have read in this thread.

[OldF]

RAC used to have Silverstone track stage...

I think it was the Donington circuit that was used.

Donington, Silverstone have both been used, in fact I think they were both included in 1997-99. Also both Oulton Park, Aintree have been used in the past. All used when there were the Spectator Country house stages which pulled in huge crowds. Something I'd like to see brought back.

I quoted these posts from the “Rally Deutschland 2012” thread and because posts are off topic from the “Rally Deutschland 2012” and I continue here.

As much as I dislike this kind of “ spectator stages”, I think this is what WRC needs at the moment, easy access to see a WRC car in action. It could attracts people who’s not following rallying regulary to became more interested about rallying and some day go out to the real stages.

I remember these stages was called “Mickey Mouse” stages (at least in the Finnish motorsport press) and the real RAC rally started on the second day.

[Prisoner Monkeys]

Here are a few ideas:

1) Encourage the participation of more manufacturers by introducing a new championship: the World Championship for Manufacturers. All drivers who are elegible to score points will score them for their manufacturer, regardless of which team they are driving for (so Latvala and Tanak would both score points for Ford). The current World Championship for Manufacturers, where drivers score points for each team, would be renamed the World Championship for Teams.

2) Expand the calendar to twenty-four rallies, with sixteen events in a season. Eight of these would be considered "core" events, and run on a yearly basis. The other sixteen would be paired together and run on a bi-annual rotation, similar to the Australia-New Zealand rounds. New events should be tailored to appeal to manufacturers where possible (so an event in Japan or even South Korea is a must), and also based on what they bring to the calendar. For instance, there are no rallies in tropical areas, or in deserts, or at high altitude, which I find odd given that a big part of the appeal of rallying is seeing events in difficult conditions. Every individual rally should have something unique about it, which makes it instantly recogniseable to audiences.

3) Encourage rallies to adopt a longer format - up to 600km, if not longer. Also explore the possibility of different formats: sprint (two days, 200km), standard (three days, 400km) and endurance (four-five days, 600km).

4) Introduce a new rule: 30% of a rally (roughly one day) should be run on stages that have never been used by that rally before (alternatively, run on stages that have not been used in the past five years).

5) Stages should not be used more than once in a rally. If they are to be re-used, then they should be run in reverse on the second pass through. This should be still be kept to a minimum, though.

6) Bring back night stages.

7) Get rid of Rally2. It's rubbish. If a driver retires, then he should be out for good (though he may be able to come back for the power stage).

8) Run the power stages separately to the rally. They should be the final stage, and retired drivers should be entitled to come back for it, but they should not count towards the overall running of the rally.

[olschl]

I guess I don't see how this will bring more spectators to the sport? Perhaps this is a list of how you would like the WRC to operate? Maybe if each point explained how it would bring more fans we could see where you are coming from.

[Prisoner Monkeys]

Okay:

1) Catering to more manufacturers - who doesn't want to see more manufacturers fighting it out? Right now, we have Ford vs. Citroen, and that's fine ... but Ford vs. Citroen vs. Volkswagen vs. Mini vs. Whoever (Hyundai?) will make things more interesting.

2) Expanding the calendar - more rallies means more opportunities to see rallying, and there is the potential to take the sport to new markets and find new audiences. Right now, there is one rally in North America, one rally in South America and one rally in the Asia-Pacific, which really stymies the ability of fans in those areas to see rallying.

3-5) Varied formats, new stages and no repeats - this is mostly to keep things fresh. I think the WRC has felt a tad stale at times, so this is mostly designed to address that.

6) Night stages - they're always spectacular.

7) Getting rid of Rally2 - Rally2 might give spectators more value for money in that they can see more cars, more often, but I think it really treats them like idiots. I think spectators would appreciate it more if there are actual stakes to play for, where a mistake can put someone out of the event for good, rather than giving them a chance to come back the next day.

8) Separating the power stage - this one was mostly born out of removing Rally2. It gives retired drivers a chance to come back and fight for points, but keeps them out of the wider rally that they retired from.

[olschl]

So you feel getting people out into the stages is what will save the WRC? To me, the entire success of the WRC hinges on how innovative they choose to get with mobile/computer coverage. 75 minutes of coverage every 3 weeks, almost 20 of which is b-roll, is not enough time for the casual viewer to gain an emotional connection with a driver/team/manufacturer. I want to be able to follow my driver through the stages via their on-board. I want access to amateur footage from the stages instantly, a decent ****ing app for my Android phone that looks good, doesn't crash and gives my real-time access to splits, news, interviews. I want more pre-race coverage of the parc ferme with driver interviews, tech stories and manufacturer showcases, a weekly show/podcast/vidcast to keep interest up between rallies. These are the things I feel will save the WRC. As a casual fan, I feel some here are too close to the sport to understand what will get the "Average Joe" involved. I can assure you he doesn't care about the details of 600km rallies, sprints or varied formats. He just wants, no needs, much, much better coverage than we have now.

[Prisoner Monkeys]

So you feel getting people out into the stages is what will save the WRC?

It sure as hell won't hurt. There's nothing quite like being up close to the action.

To me, the entire success of the WRC hinges on how innovative they choose to get with mobile/computer coverage. 75 minutes of coverage every 3 weeks, almost 20 of which is b-roll, is not enough time for the casual viewer to gain an emotional connection with a driver/team/manufacturer.

Perhaps the FIA could look at restructuring the categories a little. I think the WRC Academy is a step in the right direction, but I think rallying needs feeder series, so that you can follow the progress of talented drivers early on in their careers. Take, for example, Daniel Oliveria: who is he? Wikipedia tells me that he drives for the Brazil World Rally Team, but how did he get to the pinnacle of the sport?

On the other hand, Elfyn Evans is looking really good - he's got three consecutive victories and a thirty-five point lead in the Academy. I can watch his progress early on, see that he's a star of the future, and follow his career so that when he gets to the top, that emotional bond you speak of is already firmly established.

Perhaps the FIA should look at structuring the PWRC and the SWRC a little more rigidly, following the model set forth by Formula 1, with the GP2 and GP3 Series as feeder categories. I'm guessing that's what they're working on with the R-class cars.

As a casual fan, I feel some here are too close to the sport to understand what will get the "Average Joe" involved. I can assure you he doesn't care about the details of 600km rallies, sprints or varied formats. He just wants, no needs, much, much better coverage than we have now.

As you say, people don't have enough material with which to form an emotional connection to the sport.

But what happens once they do?

The average Joe might not be too concerned with the nuances of the sport, but once he's hooked on rallying, he's going to need more substance to keep his interest going, and that's where my plan comes in.

[Rally Power]

Okay:

1) Catering to more manufacturers - who doesn't want to see more manufacturers fighting it out? Right now, we have Ford vs. Citroen, and that's fine ... but Ford vs. Citroen vs. Volkswagen vs. Mini vs. Whoever (Hyundai?) will make things more interesting.

2) Expanding the calendar - more rallies means more opportunities to see rallying, and there is the potential to take the sport to new markets and find new audiences. Right now, there is one rally in North America, one rally in South America and one rally in the Asia-Pacific, which really stymies the ability of fans in those areas to see rallying.

3-5) Varied formats, new stages and no repeats - this is mostly to keep things fresh. I think the WRC has felt a tad stale at times, so this is mostly designed to address that.

Yours enthusiastic suggestions, in some cases similar to Todt’s revealed intentions, creates a dilemma: expanding the calendar and enlarging the rallies routes will increase participation budgets, making the series less appealing to manufactuers, especially in nowadays recessional environment.

In order to avoid budget raise, one solution for european rounds could be transnational rallies, using close to borders routes from neighbours countries (as used in Sweden/Norway rally and in several cross-coutry Bajas).

This way we could easily get 5 great european rounds, add the Montecarlo and a full scale GB rally, and pick 5 rallies in other continents in order to get a reasonable 12 events worldwide championship.

[Prisoner Monkeys]

I'm not talking about doing all of this in one hit. I simply listed those ideas in order of how big the changes would be. The expansion of the calendar would be final step in the whole process, once new manufacturers are in the sport and committed, a new promoter is in place and has started to grow the sport, and so on.

The trick is to get new manufacturers into the sport and committed to staying there. Suzuki lasted all of a season before they backed out, and Mini's future is up in the air as well. Rallying really needs something like the Concorde Agreement to bind everything together. Get manufacturers to commit for three years at a time, and encourage them to support customer teams. I could see four or five manufacturers in the sport, each with a works team and a customer team (or even two) once the economy picks up again.

When it comes to overseas events, pair them together to spread the costs around a little, and maybe set aside some of the sport's revenue to offset the costs. Maybe even introduce a budget cap for teams to stop things from turning into an arms race. One of the biggest drawcards of the sport is the stability of the regulations - where Formula 1 changes its technical rules every year, the WRC keeps its technical rules in place for years on end. And there are probably other ways of keeping costs down as well that I haven't thought of.

[Mirek]

Mate, most of Your ideas are totally unreal. For Your own good stop dreaming about how You would like it to be but think more about how it really can be.