Official WRC thread

The Eurosport commentary was great with Paul King, atleast he is still with Dave.

It seems MotorsTV has got a bigger share of the broadcast rights. Dave, as far as i've seen, only has a roundup on Sunday evening.
 
I was watching the in car video of Ken Block in Mexico and I'm fairly certain his co driver Alex Gelsomino is the Count from Sesame Street...:D

Holy crap! So I'm not the only one? :lol:
 
So as I've just recently found a source for WRC news, can someone explain why Mitsubishi and Subaru pulled out of WRC? I know Mitsu closed Ralliart, but is Subaru out of rally for good like Mitsu is?
 
I believe Subaru pulled out because they were effected by the economy crisis so badly that they had to close down their rally division. Their return to the sport is a bit unknown at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised to see them at the line next year when the cars will be based on the S2000 cars, making it possible for low budget teams to join in as well.

The first day of Rally Jordan has also come to an end. The standings of the top 10 at the moment:

1. Latvala
2. Ogier
3. Loeb
4. P.Solberg
5. Hirvonen
6. Sordo
7. H.Solberg
8. Wilson
9. Villagra
10. R?ikk?nen
 
Last edited:
Pretty much, but their situation as far as competitiveness goes was a contributing factor. At that point they had a car which was uncompetitive and didn't show any short-term potential, and with the change to S2000 based machinery planned for 2010 they didn't have the time needed to develop that car into a rally winner either. So when the economy crisis hit it was a pretty easy decision to axe the programme.

As for Mitsubishi, their performance dropped dramatically when they lost Tommi M?kinen at the end of 2001 and their Evo 7 WRC wasn't as competitive as it's predecessor. Over the next few years the factory's interest in WRC slowly trailed off. That was long before the economic crisis started. The closure of Ralliart will not have that much effect in WRC itself, that's more about their group N machinery and performance road cars.

As far as WRC return goes only time will tell. Both Mitsubishi and Subaru have built their marketing heavily on their rallying successes and at the moment they continue this by dominating the Group N championships worldwide. In a way that is a very cost effective way for them to market their products to their key customers, so I guess the keyt question is how badly do they need to have presence in WRC.
 
Kudos to whoever managed to convince the drivers to get into the gladiator outfits. Especially Kimi! :lol:

Kimi didn't even bother to take off his gansta cap and shades. I saw a short video of him putting the stuff on and he put the gladiator helmet right over his cap. ROFL! :lol:

BTW I was totally confused by this running Thursday - Saturday thing. Wandering around news sites last night (Eastern Oz DST) looking for shakedown times and finding they were actually running a full day of stages = major WTF? This is what happens when my internet connection goes down. :?
 
Last edited:
Oh godfrickendammit! Mikko went off and lost a front wheel. :censored:
Urging Petter on now, and hoping Kimi can finish this one. :crosses fingers: If Loeb keeps catching up to Latvala like this, it's all his to loose. Normal programming in the WRC has resumed. :-(

EDIT: Some places now saying it was suspension damage, and not wheel off as first reported.
 
Last edited:
Drivers want a WRC Qualifying session

The drivers in the World Rally Championship have called for a qualifying session on the eve of events to decide the running order. This week's Jordan Rally has been run with consistent and controversial manoeuvring from Ford and Citroen to get their drivers in the best place on the road. Six-time world champion and Jordan winner Sebastien Loeb said the drivers have come up with a way of improving the situation for all concerned.


"It's boring for us to talk about this, we don't want to anymore," said Loeb. "We have to look at the way we can change the situation and all of the drivers are talking about one possibility, to have shakedown which will be qualification for the rally.


"We should all do four laps in the order of championship. The first three laps are to clean the road, then on the fourth lap we take the time and the driver with the fastest time can then chose his position for the first day [of the rally]. After that, the leader of each day can chose his position for the following day. Then it's fair for everybody, we would all start at equal chances to win. On the sport side, this is fair.


"This would also make some interest for the shakedown stage. It will make a good story for the media and stop this problem. This could work for a two-day rally because on some events, we spend two days doing nothing really, just playing tactics and then on Sunday we have the race."
 
Well, something needs to be done, as the tactical manipulations of both manufacturer teams in Jordan were absolutely disgusting...but all within the rules. It's just not right, I felt especially sorry for Sebastien Ogier having to sacrifice a potential podium finish. Bleghh! If there were more manufacturers competing at the WRC-class level it might help to put a stop to this, but the series just doesn't have enough appeal or make enough economic sense, it would seem. It's so frustrating! it's all wait and see if the new regs next year can change anything.....

Oh, and congratulations to Kimi for scoring his first points in the WRC and not destroying his car! Woohoo! :dance:
 
Last edited:
To me the answer is simple. Change road order after every service halt. It's only a problem for the WRC boys as they run at the front of the pack, and there are only 10-12 WRCars running anyway so it can't be that hard logistically. If Solberg/Sordo shoot to the front in 2 stages coz they are running 8th on the road, then the next two stages after service they are first and second and get the disadvantage.

It means no-one gets a huge advantage from doing 100k's from 8th on the road, and no-one gets too disadvantaged as even if they are bleeding time its only for 2 stages.
 
They had something like that in Monte Carlo this year. They called it a 'prologue' and it was a separate stage on the night before the real event started. It worked pretty well there so utilising shakedown for this might not be a bad idea.

There is another solution which is much simpler and has been succesfully used before: Use reverse starting order for the top 15. It was used for few years before and it worked like a charm, but then FIA decided it was good idea to drop it despite the fact that every single rally fan knew it would result in this kind of controversy. IIRC this was before 2008 season.

edit: On Necx0's point, that would still leave room for tactics as you could still manipulate the results to get an advantage for those few stages. It would lessen the advantage that could be gained but it would still be there. Also, this time the strategies didn't involve slowing down on stages or manipulating the results in another way, some drivers just entered the stages at the wrong time to mix the running order. The only way to get rid of this is to alter everyone's starting order in such a way that pulling a stunt like that would offer no advantage.
 
Last edited:
Not sure a prologue is the answer, although the more I think about it it does have its plus points. For all the fuss over this manipulating results through stage entry times has been going on for 30 years!!

You are right reversing the top 15 (not that there is a top 15 these days!) used to work although then those lower down seriously have no hope, Malcolm says then you know who is going to win the rally after day 1.

Fuck it just bring back 700-800km rallies so we get rid of this flat-out win it or bin it approach.
 
Well, something needs to be done, as the tactical manipulations of both manufacturer teams in Jordan were absolutely disgusting...but all within the rules. It's just not right, I felt especially sorry for Sebastien Ogier having to sacrifice a potential podium finish. Bleghh! If there were more manufacturers competing at the WRC-class level it might help to put a stop to this, but the series just doesn't have enough appeal or make enough economic sense, it would seem. It's so frustrating! it's all wait and see if the new regs next year can change anything.....

Oh, and congratulations to Kimi for scoring his first points in the WRC and not destroying his car! Woohoo! :dance:

Mikko was way out of the points so playing with his "starting position" wouldn't really hurt.
But I really feel sorry for Ogier, throwing away 3rd and lots of very valuable points, and he really deserved the podium that should be his but got taken away thanks to stupid team orders.

what happened with the simple reverse the top 10's starting position thing. That seems to work quite well didn't it~? (Although that will mean Loeb will just go and win the rally by 1min from Mikko, with the rest a further 5min behind)
 
I was wondering.. why didn't they send Kimi out to sweep the roads instead of his fellow Citroen Jr teammate Ogier? After all, the latter was in a stronger points scoring position compared to the F1 WC.
 
Because Ogier is the better driver of the two? What Citro?n needed was a driver who was fast enough so that Loeb would not catch him during the stages and also someone who would not park the car into a ditch. You could argue that Kimi would have been quite a risk on both accounts.
 
Nothing about rally Turkey? It was pretty awesome, apart from Loeb taking the race win... yet again : (

Spectacular performance from Kimi : ) Finished 5th, beating the Argentine rally champ Federico Villagra : ) Absolutely faultless performance, apart from that small hiccup (stall) on the tight tarmac/gravel hairpin.

And well done to Petter, consistent podium finishes put him 2nd in the championship standing. Now I just need Loeb to run off a cliff or something : p
 
I pretty much forgot entirely about the rally. Oops (I mean, having it the same weekend as the Chinese GP? Oh, and I had real life shit to do too, LOL!).
However when I read later that Kimi came fifth I did a stupid little dance right there in front of my computer and my very very confused friend. Also, I'm over the moon about how well Petter's doing. WOOT! :dance:

Henning and Dani had such a poor event though...in fact they're both having a pretty ordinary season so far, and Mikko disappointed me again :-( Now, I would really like to see him beat Loeb, but running him over a cliff? Dunno about that! :lol:
 
Petter needs to be with a third team. I hope BMW gets their act together and starts that Mini team.
 
Top