2024 WRC News & Rumours

[Fast Eddie WRC]

How about any drivers not committed to the full Championship start at the front, with whoever had the done fewest rounds going first ?

[focus206]

I don't normally mind having the championship leader open the road on the first day. But then you have rallies like Latvia and this year's Sweden, when the skills of who opens the road matter little and luck matters a lot.
Other drivers have problems and drop down? Nice, you don''t have the sweep the road on saturday as well. Nobody has problems? Unlucky, you open the road on saturday too and can only hope for others' problems, your speed is irrelevant.
In all rallies a driver's result is dependant also on others' mistakes, but in this cases it's almost only down to it and it feels very much luck based.

[CeskyOndra]

Mid-Summer Tarmac rally is missing. Then it would be better. Neuville is right that you CAN'T keep the championship lead 7 gravel rallies in a row. Kalle did, but he was quite lucky and had some rain. Neuville had big snowfall in Sweden and Bone-Dry gravels...

[denkimi]

And in what order they go qualifying? Still, someone is unhappy.

All rc1 cars drive the stage twice, time of second pass counts.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

All rc1 cars drive the stage twice, time of second pass counts.

Yep. Use the same stage as Shakedown with several runs then finally as Qualifying.

[AndersX]

Mix events evely and this wont be an issue. This year, especially, callender is the problem - 7 gravel rallies in the row.

[denkimi]

The main issue is that the 2 best drivers do partial seasons.
No matter how you mix it, the championship contenders will never have a chance against an ogier or rovanpera with a 5 place advantage on gravel. This is a problem we didn't have in the past.

Unless we go back to qualifying, or some form of penalty for partial drivers, we will have to accept that the championship contenders will win almost no rallies.

[saco0o]

Yep. Use the same stage as Shakedown with several runs then finally as Qualifying.

hmm. interesting. like: 1st run on championship points order, 2nd run reversed

[Steve Boyd]

Reversing road order for second loop of friday stages would be good enough

I think it would be better to keep Friday as it is but use the reverse of the Friday start order for Saturday, instead of reverse classification order, and only use reverse classification order for Sunday.

[saco0o]

read something that made me think: could making part time drivers run before the 6 full timers reduce the number of events these guys actually care to do? cuz they would not win (like for seb or kalle) and these random 3rd entries in hyundai would become less effective, so why bother?