If You believe that one of the worlds largest car manufacturers, when choosing a person to run one of its bigget and most important marketing and branding campaigns, hires a person that is "stupid" , then I think You are wrong.

I think that to call Jost Capito stupid would miss the mark by a huge margin.

There are probably a lot of people on this forum that know the details of his exploits a lot better than I do, and talked to him more often than I have (I have met him only once), but if You look at his track record You cant be anything but impressed of what he has achieved. This both in motorsports, but also in regular car manufacture, as the boss of Fords ST- and RS-products. It was Capito - and his team - that developed Ford ST, and RS to strong performance brands in the modern world (yes, I know that RS carries a heritatge.)

When talks are made about changes to the WRC, You also must remember where Jost Capito is coming from. He has to defend Volkswagens spending with how much media attantion and brand building this offers, against other activities they could spend their marketing budget on. If he cant defend or deliver Return On Investment, Volkswagen is out of WRC by morning.

The fact that there are curently so few manufacturers in the WRC, is a testament to how most manufacturers rate the value of competing in the championship.
If the sport of WRC should be a sport taath attracts manufacturers with big budgets, wich then again ables drivers, engineers etc to live of this sport, the marketing and branding return must be improved.

Jost Capito is a very strong ambassador for the WRC, both towards the board at Volkswagen, and towards the media etc. Its in his best interest that this sport grows as popular as possible. He has showed earlier with different projects that he knows a thing or two about marketing/brand building etc, so I think it is a bit ignorant to rule him out before he is even given a chance.

If Jost Capito reaches his aim of improving the broadcatsing, media coverage, brand value etc, we all win. This is because this will then attract more manufacturers, they will need more drivers, more mechanics, engineers etc, and this in turn will make our whole sport bigger.

If the shootout that is not a shootout is put in effect, I my self do not know if this will work or not, but I do know that big changes has to be made to the promoting of the sport to make it more attractive for more manufacturers. The WRC has had a steady decline in popularity, and I think that a change has got to come, and that we should dare to try different things in the hope of finding the magic ingredient.
I think changes like this would affect how we has hard core rally nerds view the sport only a small extent.