Rally Ireland your Views.............

[chrisc]

Sorry but i think this should be a thread on its own

Now that the rally is over can i have everyone’s views on the rally. (forgetting everything else on the other thread about the WRC being dead and WRC radio etc) i am looking to find out what people think of rally Ireland as a event e.g. do people think Ireland is challenge for the drivers , exciting to watch and should it stay in the WRC etc

Thanks

[Mirek]

Chris, was the weather realy that bad that SS7 and 8 had to be canceled? I think that in Ireland drivers are used to drive in terrible conditions. Or was it just because of stupid tyre rulles in WRC?

[chrisc]

I was up at ss8 when it got called off and took a drive over it to see how bad it was and yes i think it was the right decision to call them off the water was very deep in places and there was a lot of running water coming off the fields, at that stage it had been raining heavy for almost 24hrs so it was very bad and in the dark it would have been 2 dangerous

[Mirek]

Thank You

[bluuford]

I mentioned it in Rally Ireland official tread that Rally Ireland is wonderful and very unique event. If someone asks me question, which rally I prefer to start the season Monte or Ireland then I choose Ireland. And at the end of January.. definitely.
Why:
1) The weather can be as challenging as in Monte and in some cases even more difficult.
2) It is the place where you actually can see cars sliding on tarmac kind of road.
3) Its is very spectator friendly rally. In my mind I am little bit agree with Mosely. He says that rallying is for internet. That is true. World is going to innovative direction and rallying is for innovative people and I just noticed that I haven't watched TV almost a week by now. At the same time rallying is very much "contact" sport. You have to see cars passing you only a few meters from you to get addicted. Therefore it is extremely important to create good conditions for spectator access. There are superb conditions for than in Ireland and organizers have used it well.
4) The best superspecial stage on tarmac I have ever seen.

If I look the rally from that side (leaving out the points you asked to), then I think it has potential to be one of the classic events and I hope its future will be bright.

[chrisc]

if you take a look at this vid the water was like this the whole way over the stage and like i said in the dark it would have been to dangerous

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-nPW_dBOo&feature=channel_page

[Mirek]

bluuford: I agree that the weather in Ireland was more difficult than on Monte 07 and 08 but definitely not harder than in 2009 and many of the years before. When there is heavy rain on every stage, You know that there is a lot of water everywhere, no real surprise and no tyre lotery. But this year Monte had totaly changebale conditions. In first leg one stage was totaly icy, one mostly dry and one was half way wet and half way snowy. Moreover snowing started half an hour before the stage. Second day first stage was icy, second snowy and third wet. That was one section. In second run, two were wet and mudy and third was partly snowy and icy. And in third leg first stage was completely snowy because of heavy snow falls in the night (we even didn't reach our point by car and had to walk 3 km up the hill), all the rest was partly dry with a lot of ice and some snow around Turini. And for that You could choose a lot of different tyres, not only two WRC type. That made huge differences in tactics and strategy of the teams and also caught a lot of them out.

Anyway I like Irish roads very much but Monte is Monte. Even though it has some dissadvantages as well.

[Torsen]

they should'a ran 7 & 8...

[cosmicpanda]

I enjoyed Rally Ireland in 2007 and I enjoyed it this year as well. Shame about the night stages, as they would've been great.

The only thing is, I hate it when rallies have such short third legs. They either need to have really spectacular stages to make up for the lack of distance - as in NZ with the Whaanga Coast, Argentina with El Condor, and Monte with the Col de Turini - or they need to have longer third legs. Otherwise there's almost no chance of the standings changing, which makes it boring.

Rally Jordan was perfect in terms of route planning, I think, with the repeated 40 km stage on the Sunday. As I remember, that had so much gravel that even on the second pass it hadn't cleaned properly!

[Shrike]

I absolutely love Irish Tarmac rallies. Even with the current state of the WRC I enjoyed Rally Ireland anyway.

[urabus-denoS2000]

I love those Irish stages,in my opinion the best in the world!

I think it shuld be a full-time WRC rally,especially because WRC needs more tarmac rallys

[Karukera]

Great scennery, green, rainy, challenging, with competent organizers responsive to the weather conditions. A great rally.

[AndyRAC]

Keep Rally Ireland, but run it in the summer months.

[Viking]

I am most stunned over how fast it is, 110,5 km/h (even in these conditions) makes it the fastest tarmac rally in the series.
If it was dry I guess it would be up there with Rally Finland.

[A.F.F.]

Keep Rally Ireland, but run it in the summer months.

I agree 100%. Not only because the road conditions but also the beautiful Irish scenery :up:

[Daniel]

they should'a ran 7 & 8...
So someone who was there says it's too dangerous and you with your in depth knowledge of weather and road conditions in the British Isles say otherwise? :mark:

For me the rally itself looked great and I can't fault the event and how it was run but the coverage and championship being played out just didn't do the event justice.

[pino]

Ireland is a great event wich deserves a visit in the next years ;) , but I agree it should be runned in summer-time. And I still prefere the Monte as opening season event, Turini on snow is unbeatable :D

[MJW]

At the risk of being banned by moderators if I break forum rules but I saw this post on another forum and here it is. In my opinion an accurate summary of Rally Ireland and the WRC in general. I 100% agree with this.....

having spent the last 3 days behind the scenes on rally ireland - a few things struck me....... firstly though the tv crews cameramen, reporters, journalists and backroom personnel all work hard - start at 4 am each day finish at 9 pm if lucky ...... I saw no sign of anyone "living it up on expenses" .
The first thing that struck me though was that they are all very aware of who is paying for the WRC in its current form. For Citroen, Abu Dhabi, Airwaves and this weekend local sponsors Discover Ireland.com, and northern ireland tourist board....... producers, cameramen and everyone I met is focussed first and foremost to make sure the sponsors get their logos on telly - by definition then it is a second prority to get the story.
I was also a little dissapointed to see that (perhaps unsurprisingly) some of our WRC stars are also suffering from a little prima donna syndrome - this would appear to be more prevalent among the "salaried" stars. Henning Solberg and young Burkhart appeared to be the only guys who were genuinely excited to be competing in the event.

at the end I am left with the impression that the wrc as an entity has been taken over by marketing people who have an interest in rallying rather than rally obsessives who know how to string together a decent tv program. Plum Tyndall and Mick Bracken of RPM Motorsport are first and foremost rally fan's. This to me is a result that WRC should follow an F1 model - the last time i saw this was at the dawn of professional rugby -it took some time for Bath (kings of the amatuer game) and other teams to figure out it could not compete with the football premiership - it had to find its own place in the world.

Rallyings corporate guests today are entertained in the service park (my guide to eating your way through all the hospitality tents may well see publication some day) not out on the stages. Rallying is about the stages not the service area.

WRC has a problem - its too flash and too expensive and has started to put too many marketing people between the sport and the fans. It has people spending scarce resources making the sport narrower by over regulation and standardisation rather than opening things up. The corporate world are given passes with a knife and fork logo that allow them to get into an area that neither Joe Public, the drivers or mechanics inhabit. They have a fine lunch, see one service and think they have been to "the rally". Rallyings great strength I always believed was its accessability and the thrill when car 1 came into view at the first corner you picked to spectate on an event - I wonder if WRC rallying neutered.

One person explained to me that they couldnt understand why JWRC was so undersubscribed when the concept of a young guy in a small car was so perfect. It does sond natty from a marketing point of view but the same person had no idea of the cost of purchasing and running a JWRC car. This and the lack of somewhere to go if successful had been completely missed.

WRC / ISC people are in equal parts jealous of and completely scared at the burgeoning success of IRC - it will be interesting to see how things go over the next few years. Citroen are french and as long as they love rallying they will continue but someday some new idea will arrive and they will go elsewhere - MSport and MW are fantastic supporters of rallying but are a completely commercial organisation - there is no "love" in the WRC - its just business.

going down the marketing led route has led to Neil Cole (a sound bloke) running a really good entertainment program based on rallying - I dont think Dave are attempting to produce the "historical record" of the event. Football has many entertainment programs based on football - it has its place

For WRC to survive (and it has brought us some horny cars) it needs to find a way to develop the sport and also make it commercially viable - to me this requires a simplificaton of the rules both technical and ISC / WRC non rally administrative bollox - an example - local competitors would not enter rally ireland as they could not use their own tyres ??
I dont condone going back to living in a cave and i wont call for a return to the old days - things must progress - one of the best ideas I heard was that WRC Virtual Spectator type technology offers similar internet betting type opportunites to horse racing - if rallying could capture 0.01% of the international internet betting market - money would not be a problem in the sport - but it wouldnt be rallying "like the olddays" either.

At the end of the day everything works in cycles - maybe we are in transition - IRC more affordable, more accessable - more "real rallying" - it might be the successful future of rallying.

[alexlake]

thought it looked good on tv, weather and look of wales, just on tarmac, not gravel!. lots of crashes, punctures, moving round of leaderboard (part from loeb), all makes for a good rally i reckon.

shame on number of cars entered though.

[ProRally]

At the risk of being banned by moderators if I break forum rules but I saw this post on another forum and here it is. In my opinion an accurate summary of Rally Ireland and the WRC in general. I 100% agree with this.....

having spent the last 3 days behind the scenes on rally ireland - a few things struck me....... firstly though the tv crews cameramen, reporters, journalists and backroom personnel all work hard - start at 4 am each day finish at 9 pm if lucky ...... I saw no sign of anyone "living it up on expenses" .
The first thing that struck me though was that they are all very aware of who is paying for the WRC in its current form. For Citroen, Abu Dhabi, Airwaves and this weekend local sponsors Discover Ireland.com, and northern ireland tourist board....... producers, cameramen and everyone I met is focussed first and foremost to make sure the sponsors get their logos on telly - by definition then it is a second prority to get the story.
I was also a little dissapointed to see that (perhaps unsurprisingly) some of our WRC stars are also suffering from a little prima donna syndrome - this would appear to be more prevalent among the "salaried" stars. Henning Solberg and young Burkhart appeared to be the only guys who were genuinely excited to be competing in the event.

at the end I am left with the impression that the wrc as an entity has been taken over by marketing people who have an interest in rallying rather than rally obsessives who know how to string together a decent tv program. Plum Tyndall and Mick Bracken of RPM Motorsport are first and foremost rally fan's. This to me is a result that WRC should follow an F1 model - the last time i saw this was at the dawn of professional rugby -it took some time for Bath (kings of the amatuer game) and other teams to figure out it could not compete with the football premiership - it had to find its own place in the world.

Rallyings corporate guests today are entertained in the service park (my guide to eating your way through all the hospitality tents may well see publication some day) not out on the stages. Rallying is about the stages not the service area.

WRC has a problem - its too flash and too expensive and has started to put too many marketing people between the sport and the fans. It has people spending scarce resources making the sport narrower by over regulation and standardisation rather than opening things up. The corporate world are given passes with a knife and fork logo that allow them to get into an area that neither Joe Public, the drivers or mechanics inhabit. They have a fine lunch, see one service and think they have been to "the rally". Rallyings great strength I always believed was its accessability and the thrill when car 1 came into view at the first corner you picked to spectate on an event - I wonder if WRC rallying neutered.

One person explained to me that they couldnt understand why JWRC was so undersubscribed when the concept of a young guy in a small car was so perfect. It does sond natty from a marketing point of view but the same person had no idea of the cost of purchasing and running a JWRC car. This and the lack of somewhere to go if successful had been completely missed.

WRC / ISC people are in equal parts jealous of and completely scared at the burgeoning success of IRC - it will be interesting to see how things go over the next few years. Citroen are french and as long as they love rallying they will continue but someday some new idea will arrive and they will go elsewhere - MSport and MW are fantastic supporters of rallying but are a completely commercial organisation - there is no "love" in the WRC - its just business.

going down the marketing led route has led to Neil Cole (a sound bloke) running a really good entertainment program based on rallying - I dont think Dave are attempting to produce the "historical record" of the event. Football has many entertainment programs based on football - it has its place

For WRC to survive (and it has brought us some horny cars) it needs to find a way to develop the sport and also make it commercially viable - to me this requires a simplificaton of the rules both technical and ISC / WRC non rally administrative bollox - an example - local competitors would not enter rally ireland as they could not use their own tyres ??
I dont condone going back to living in a cave and i wont call for a return to the old days - things must progress - one of the best ideas I heard was that WRC Virtual Spectator type technology offers similar internet betting type opportunites to horse racing - if rallying could capture 0.01% of the international internet betting market - money would not be a problem in the sport - but it wouldnt be rallying "like the olddays" either.

At the end of the day everything works in cycles - maybe we are in transition - IRC more affordable, more accessable - more "real rallying" - it might be the successful future of rallying.

A very true statement that I too agree with....
Like many of us already said the 'real' rallying from the good old days are gone, with night stages, 40+ different stages, road side service and so on.
The current format is made for the marketing guys, who unfortunatly can not sell the packages and it must compete with other forms of motorsport. They SHOULD be afraid from IRC, but also we know that it going to hard to top the Monte Carlo show from a few weeks ago with fantastic coverage.
We live in strange times at the moment, so who now S2000+ ? Even the untouchable F1 is looking stupid with the wide nose and narrow rear spoilers... even talk of a standard engine... again we live in strange times.

[chris16valve]

rally ireland is a good challenge for the drivers .the weather changes alot.if the rally was tuesday and yesterday it would be a snow and ice rally ,today its very dry and forcast for weekend is rain ,our roads change grip level alot.the bumps and jumps,are great and the narrow roads