RE: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sebastien?
Discussion
TVR500Morgan said:
DJRC said:
When did Richard Burns become a rallying great?? Fairly handy yes, great? Knock it off. Munari or Henri he aint.
When he became a world champion in 2001, Richard Burns is a legend. 
TVR500Morgan said:
DJRC said:
When did Richard Burns become a rallying great?? Fairly handy yes, great? Knock it off. Munari or Henri he aint.
When he became a world champion in 2001, Richard Burns is a legend.
No he isnt. He might be a British legend, but not a rallying legend. Speaking to my Finnish and French colleagues who are into their rallying, mention Burns and they laugh, which is a bit harsh in my opinion, but reflects attitudes to him outside of the UK. A Great to me is someone in the All Time Top 10, Burns isnt and possibly not even top 15 for me, but I do regard him as very good. Just a fair way from being either a Great or a Legend.When he became a world champion in 2001, Richard Burns is a legend.
Lots of comparatives to ex greats mentioned, in their prime or not. Isnt this the thing with any sport though, greats will always be compared to old greats, tyson vs ali, rossi vs doohan, schuey vs senna, the list could go on and whilst its great pub talk, times change and we will never see the battles above and discussions about who was/is the best is merely down to conjecture and opinion! You could also argue the heralded greats like the mentioned Loeb, Shuey, Rossi etc have not had the competition, but isnt that the exact point, its very unlikely to have two greats at any one time battling it out season upon season! If you did, i doubt the list mentioned would be as large as titles would have swopped between the two, so no long runs!
What is the answer to stop Loebs run?
Although he started winning a long long time ago, the current list of manufacturers does not really help, apart from the recent edition of Mini, we have two main manufacturers! Im sure if we had Peugeot, Toyota and more so cars that cut their teeth on the rally circuit, Subaru and Mitsubishi throwing some money at development we would perhaps see something different!
P.s Really dont like the Team Orders where drivers have been gifted wins or higher places at the expense of their team mate and that also is directed at Loeb!
What is the answer to stop Loebs run?
Although he started winning a long long time ago, the current list of manufacturers does not really help, apart from the recent edition of Mini, we have two main manufacturers! Im sure if we had Peugeot, Toyota and more so cars that cut their teeth on the rally circuit, Subaru and Mitsubishi throwing some money at development we would perhaps see something different!
P.s Really dont like the Team Orders where drivers have been gifted wins or higher places at the expense of their team mate and that also is directed at Loeb!
Edited by jetpilot on Tuesday 15th November 08:54
No disrespect to Loeb but the WRC is a pale imitation of what it used to be let alone the Grp A days with Auriol and the like.
Excuse me while I get misty eyed and recall the days when it was free to go into the forest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKlCKu7_Z3g
I'm told that they even rallied after 5pm!!!!!!
Excuse me while I get misty eyed and recall the days when it was free to go into the forest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKlCKu7_Z3g
I'm told that they even rallied after 5pm!!!!!!
jetpilot said:
Lots of comparatives to ex greats mentioned, in their prime or not. Isnt this the thing with any sport though
But the thing with Rallying is, at one point you had5 or 6 world champions all competing at the same time. Along with another 4 or 5 drivers who where just as fast but hadn't had the wins.
This meant it was almost impossible for one person to dominate like Leob has. He's on his own, there isn't anyone currently competing that's even close to him.
300bhp/ton said:
But the thing with Rallying is, at one point you had
5 or 6 world champions all competing at the same time. Along with another 4 or 5 drivers who where just as fast but hadn't had the wins.
This meant it was almost impossible for one person to dominate like Leob has. He's on his own, there isn't anyone currently competing that's even close to him.
But thats exactly my point, if one of those guys had started dominating year after year, you would be saying they had no competition!5 or 6 world champions all competing at the same time. Along with another 4 or 5 drivers who where just as fast but hadn't had the wins.
This meant it was almost impossible for one person to dominate like Leob has. He's on his own, there isn't anyone currently competing that's even close to him.
Take Loeb out the equation in recent years and there has been a handful of people who might have won, do you get it?
Being a World Champion doesnt necessarily make you a "great", what makes you a great is strings of titles like Loeb, Shuey etc
And then you will come along and say they had no competition, no they didnt, because they wiped the floor with them because they were great!!
There are a number of simple things that need doing to get rallying out of its current rut:
-Introduce an anything-goes class in the spirit of Group B. Maybe they wouldn't run for championship points, maybe they'd only qualify for use on certain stages (I guess the RGT class might work like this), but if you had cars like the Lotus Exige, Aston Martin Vantage and Porsche 911 pushed to the forefront it might generate a bit more interest. Group B's problems lay in a mixture of crowd-control and tyre technology as much as anything, and we've solved both those problems now.
-More variety of stages. Nearly every rally I see coverage of seems to be a tarmac or forest gravel stage. Bring back night rallying, bring back snow stages, bring back genuinely picturesque scenery - for me an iconic rallying image is the shadow of a TV helicopter on the Saharan sand, and a Peugeot 205 T16 high-tailing a mile of dust behind it.
-Terrestrial TV coverage. Putting it on a satellite channel reduces it to the level of a niche sport like ice hockey or squash. Unlike those, this is a sport that used to enjoy primetime TV slots and is emulated by kids with games consoles the world over. It's also one of the few motorsports that can help sell fairly 'ordinary' road cars. With that in mind, I reckon ITV4 could run a rallying show on Sundays when they're not covering the BTCC - they could do all the classes in the same all-day format and it'd attract the same amount of attention without getting in the way of ITV1's primetime schedules. I reckon the same presenting team could cover it to be honest. The single-burst nature of the stages would work well with the need for ad breaks. The BTCC coverage is second only to the BBC's F1 programmes IMO.
-Introduce an anything-goes class in the spirit of Group B. Maybe they wouldn't run for championship points, maybe they'd only qualify for use on certain stages (I guess the RGT class might work like this), but if you had cars like the Lotus Exige, Aston Martin Vantage and Porsche 911 pushed to the forefront it might generate a bit more interest. Group B's problems lay in a mixture of crowd-control and tyre technology as much as anything, and we've solved both those problems now.
-More variety of stages. Nearly every rally I see coverage of seems to be a tarmac or forest gravel stage. Bring back night rallying, bring back snow stages, bring back genuinely picturesque scenery - for me an iconic rallying image is the shadow of a TV helicopter on the Saharan sand, and a Peugeot 205 T16 high-tailing a mile of dust behind it.
-Terrestrial TV coverage. Putting it on a satellite channel reduces it to the level of a niche sport like ice hockey or squash. Unlike those, this is a sport that used to enjoy primetime TV slots and is emulated by kids with games consoles the world over. It's also one of the few motorsports that can help sell fairly 'ordinary' road cars. With that in mind, I reckon ITV4 could run a rallying show on Sundays when they're not covering the BTCC - they could do all the classes in the same all-day format and it'd attract the same amount of attention without getting in the way of ITV1's primetime schedules. I reckon the same presenting team could cover it to be honest. The single-burst nature of the stages would work well with the need for ad breaks. The BTCC coverage is second only to the BBC's F1 programmes IMO.
P I Staker said:
tbtstt said:
9 in a row?...
8. 
He is the man at moment, no doubt.
P I Staker said:
I wish they had made a road going version of the WRC Xsara. The VTS is all very good, but i want a 300bhp 4wd Subaru killer.
Fully agree. This is one of the reasons I've never really got behind Citroen as a manufacturer. They have produced a string of championship winning rally and rallycross cars, yet Citroen haven't once acknowledged this success with an equivalent road going model. I know there is a BIG gap between say, the Focus RS and the Focus WRC, but at least Ford have continued to produced some sort of road going version of their rally cars. Citroen gave us the "styled by Loeb" range a couple of years ago and thats it.
jetpilot said:
300bhp/ton said:
But the thing with Rallying is, at one point you had
5 or 6 world champions all competing at the same time. Along with another 4 or 5 drivers who where just as fast but hadn't had the wins.
This meant it was almost impossible for one person to dominate like Leob has. He's on his own, there isn't anyone currently competing that's even close to him.
But thats exactly my point, if one of those guys had started dominating year after year, you would be saying they had no competition!5 or 6 world champions all competing at the same time. Along with another 4 or 5 drivers who where just as fast but hadn't had the wins.
This meant it was almost impossible for one person to dominate like Leob has. He's on his own, there isn't anyone currently competing that's even close to him.
Take Loeb out the equation in recent years and there has been a handful of people who might have won, do you get it?
Being a World Champion doesnt necessarily make you a "great", what makes you a great is strings of titles like Loeb, Shuey etc
And then you will come along and say they had no competition, no they didnt, because they wiped the floor with them because they were great!!
Great is also difficult to define, Colin McRae was great and usually respected by all the other drivers. He was really really quick and should really have more world championships to his name. But the results don't always show this.
tbtstt said:
Fully agree. This is one of the reasons I've never really got behind Citroen as a manufacturer. They have produced a string of championship winning rally and rallycross cars, yet Citroen haven't once acknowledged this success with an equivalent road going model.
I know there is a BIG gap between say, the Focus RS and the Focus WRC, but at least Ford have continued to produced some sort of road going version of their rally cars. Citroen gave us the "styled by Loeb" range a couple of years ago and thats it.
Yeah, I imagine its because rally reps arent very profitable. However Mitsubishi and Subaru have sold rally reps for 15+ years, so there is a market.I know there is a BIG gap between say, the Focus RS and the Focus WRC, but at least Ford have continued to produced some sort of road going version of their rally cars. Citroen gave us the "styled by Loeb" range a couple of years ago and thats it.
EDLT said:
In his first full year in WRC he was even in the same team as McRae and Sainz, he beat both of them (along with Burns and Gronholm). He finished one point behind Solberg and 2nd in the championship.
I think the 2003 season and the time McRae and Sainz spent with the Xsara signals the point at which we could see the car design (and optimal driving style) in modern WRC had changed. McRae was quite vocal in expressing the conflict he had with the Citroen team and his dislike of the Xsara. It was a car that suited neither his nor (to a lesser extent perhaps) Sainz driving style but was perfect for the tidy driving of Loeb.
As I mentioned in my initial post in the thread I would love to see Loeb in a Group A car (or even pre-2000 World Rally Car) against the likes of Gronholm, Sainz or even a current driver such as Hirvonen.
As a big fan of Loeb, and after seeing him on The Cork 20 a few years back (possibly 2007) and despite a pretty decent entry, Sordo, Latvalla, Hirvonen he was actually visibly faster than most which a that level is almost scary. Also him doing donuts outside of the Pizza Hut after his victory endeared him well to anyone that was lucky enough to be around.
Having said all that I was rooting for Hirvonen at the weekend, as a change at the top would have been good for the sport and it would have been nice to see Loeb chasing next year. All this talk of would he have beaten this guy or the other is immaterial really as like any good driver he only needs to beat who he is up against, not history !! Well done on 8 Seb
Having said all that I was rooting for Hirvonen at the weekend, as a change at the top would have been good for the sport and it would have been nice to see Loeb chasing next year. All this talk of would he have beaten this guy or the other is immaterial really as like any good driver he only needs to beat who he is up against, not history !! Well done on 8 Seb
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