Discussion
Loeb goes off, fails to finish a stage and the maximum he gets is so derisory that he still manages to finish second.
Further proof that
a) WRC is rallying for the playstation generation, oops crashed press reset and go.
Real life does not have a reset button.
b) Three drivers only, the rest are well off the pace. Though to be fair that has always been the case at all levels of rallying, just that it is so obvious here.
Finally seeing how slowly they were going on the ice, I wonder if that knowledge will penetrate the thick skulls of the nobbers who take their Imprezas and Evos out when its a bit slippery and we spend all night pulling them out of ditches.
Further proof that
a) WRC is rallying for the playstation generation, oops crashed press reset and go.
Real life does not have a reset button. b) Three drivers only, the rest are well off the pace. Though to be fair that has always been the case at all levels of rallying, just that it is so obvious here.
Finally seeing how slowly they were going on the ice, I wonder if that knowledge will penetrate the thick skulls of the nobbers who take their Imprezas and Evos out when its a bit slippery and we spend all night pulling them out of ditches.
According to "Super Rally" rules, if you have an off in Leg 1 or Leg 2, you can continue the next leg with a 5 minute time penalty. If you have an off on Leg 3, you must make it back to Service Park before provisional results are released in order to be eligible for a placing with 5 minute time penalty (if you don't make it, you're DNF). You can only claim Super Rally rules once -- ie. only one off is allowed.
I don't think too bad a rule, although it breaks the traditional spirit of rallying. Also, you have to take the hat off to Loeb for catching up on his 5 minute time penalty to take second place. That's fast driving, no matter how you look at it.
Strangely, I think the WRC is looking its best in a few years. Cars have no active diffs, which permits more aggressive driving styles, and the lack of factory works teams (only Subaru and Ford have works teams) mean that more attention is given to drivers, and the drivers have a bigger say in how the cars are setup and teams are run. The private teams are actually quite competitive against the works teams -- look at Loeb, Garde, and Stohl. The rising stars are performing quite well too -- Atko, Sarrazin, Sordo, etc. Overall, I think this year's WRC will be a more entertaining one than the last.
>> Edited by Jungles on Monday 23 January 01:17
I don't think too bad a rule, although it breaks the traditional spirit of rallying. Also, you have to take the hat off to Loeb for catching up on his 5 minute time penalty to take second place. That's fast driving, no matter how you look at it.
Strangely, I think the WRC is looking its best in a few years. Cars have no active diffs, which permits more aggressive driving styles, and the lack of factory works teams (only Subaru and Ford have works teams) mean that more attention is given to drivers, and the drivers have a bigger say in how the cars are setup and teams are run. The private teams are actually quite competitive against the works teams -- look at Loeb, Garde, and Stohl. The rising stars are performing quite well too -- Atko, Sarrazin, Sordo, etc. Overall, I think this year's WRC will be a more entertaining one than the last.
>> Edited by Jungles on Monday 23 January 01:17
I particularly 'enjoyed' the Kirsty Gallagher style 'commentary'
Rallying is not a mass appeal sport. They (Dave Richards included) should accept it and stop explaining the rules and technology every time. Just show the cars being driven by skilled people. Don't just focus on the top 5 teams. And whilst I'm at it, get the 'Rally of Great Britain' back into some other parts of Great Britain!
However, Loeb is a phenomenon.
Rallying is not a mass appeal sport. They (Dave Richards included) should accept it and stop explaining the rules and technology every time. Just show the cars being driven by skilled people. Don't just focus on the top 5 teams. And whilst I'm at it, get the 'Rally of Great Britain' back into some other parts of Great Britain!
However, Loeb is a phenomenon.
3 stages out of just 18 cancelled and several where most competitors had to accept the slowest time posted by an earlier runner (or have I missed something?)
50 odd starters across all classes.
Not terribly impressive really. And odd mixes of times, presumably down to who guessed the best tyres for conditions they encountered.
As for re-starting - they would need to encourage it really, given only 50 odd starters. Perhaps it should be compulsory?
I think when Loeb referred to one event last year as a 'race' during an interview he got it right, especially for the tarmac events.
On the other hand some aspects of rallying may not always have been how they appeared to outsiders.
www.donbarrow.co.uk/autobiography_stage2.html
and read the long paragraph that accompanies the pics of the Lotus Cortina's on the 1966 RAC Rally.
50 odd starters across all classes.
Not terribly impressive really. And odd mixes of times, presumably down to who guessed the best tyres for conditions they encountered.
As for re-starting - they would need to encourage it really, given only 50 odd starters. Perhaps it should be compulsory?
I think when Loeb referred to one event last year as a 'race' during an interview he got it right, especially for the tarmac events.
On the other hand some aspects of rallying may not always have been how they appeared to outsiders.
www.donbarrow.co.uk/autobiography_stage2.html
and read the long paragraph that accompanies the pics of the Lotus Cortina's on the 1966 RAC Rally.
Jungles said:
According to "Super Rally" rules, if you have an off in Leg 1 or Leg 2, you can continue the next leg with a 5 minute time penalty. If you have an off on Leg 3, you must make it back to Service Park before provisional results are released in order to be eligible for a placing with 5 minute time penalty (if you don't make it, you're DNF). You can only claim Super Rally rules once -- ie. only one off is allowed.
I don't think too bad a rule, although it breaks the traditional spirit of rallying. Also, you have to take the hat off to Loeb for catching up on his 5 minute time penalty to take second place. That's fast driving, no matter how you look at it.
>> Edited by Jungles on Monday 23 January 01:17
Seems daft to me. All it does is encourage drivers to take greater risks, safe in teh knowledge that if they crash, they can restart. It's starting to get about as serious as F1.
groomi said:
Seems daft to me. All it does is encourage drivers to take greater risks, safe in teh knowledge that if they crash, they can restart.
I don't think it will encourage drivers to take risks - these guys will always have a different attitude to risk to circuit racers because they do not have large runoff areas and tyre walls to protect them, just ask Marko Martin.....
I've always thought that if you fail to finish you should be out of the rally. However, having travelled to a couple of rallies in Europe, got up before dawn and waited all day to see the cars it's been disappointing not being able to see some of the top drivers competing because of an earlier incident. Go to an F1 GP etc and even if driver X crashed at the first corner, you'd still have been able to see them on track through the weekend.
And on the subject of travelling miles, paying pounds and waiting hours..... How annoying must it be to have a stage you are waiting on cancelled? How can this be allowed to happen?
I went to Monte Carlo in 2003 and on the Sunday watched the Col de Turini stage. The organisation was terrible - the road was open before dawn, you simply drove up the stage as far as you wanted to, parked by the side of the narrow twisty road and waited patiently for hours.... There did not appear to be any limits on numbers of cars going up the stage and from what we could see from some of the parking and the numbers of people we must have been lucky that the stage ran. (The stage before the one we were on for the Saturday was cancelled).
With limited ways in and out of stages like that surely something can be done to control the numbers of cars.....?
And don't even start me on the quality of the ITV coverage yesterday!!
To end on a positive note, the WRC can still be highly entertaining and I for one am looking forward to the rest of this season.
Longers
kevinday said:
I am a bit confused, I understand the 5 minute penalty, but what time did Loeb get for the stage he crashed on?
This is the utter horlicks of it.
SS6 which is the stage Loeb went off and didn't complete he got crdited with a time of 23m47.6 s which is 5m 00s more than ftd which was Gronholm who was 18m 47.6s.
Yet there were 21 crews slower than this, the slowest being 34m 13.8s.
groomi said:
Shirley if this rule continues, then the competitor should receive the same time as the SLOWEST crew. Sure they can continue for testing purposes or to please the sponsors infront of the cameras, but at least they couldn't win/nearly win the rally still!
I'd agree entirely.
An alternative is to have a maximum time. Say fastest time plus 30 minutes, to pick a time totally at random. So anyone who goes off and doesn't report to the stage finish gets given ftd +30m, as does anyone who is so slow or maybe goes off / breaks down but sets a very slow time also gets a maximum of ftd +30m.
I can see why WRC have done this because in the interest of keeping the product in public view it keeps the top drivers running on the latter days. To be honest this was always a problem with the old style endurance events, where a lot of stars have gone out early doors, and the gaps betweencompetitors are such that it discourages quick driving.
Lets face it I've been on the 5th day of an International, the gap to the car in front being 6 minutes, the gap to the car behind being 12 minutes, so in theory you should poddle round for a finish, keeping tabs on those two cars in case anything happens.
But who goes rallying just to poddle round? Except you do get a shammocking from the team boss if he has instructed you to finish and he sees you giving it the berries.
LongQ said:
3 stages out of just 18 cancelled and several where most competitors had to accept the slowest time posted by an earlier runner (or have I missed something?)
If there has been an incident on a stage causing it to be halted, all drivers not runing that stage get the slowest time recorded.
3 Stages cancelled could mean problems withthe crowd. Organisers have shown if an area gets over crowded and looks dangerous they will cancel a stage. Not heard of 3 being cancelled (unless it was force majeur)
I understand the general principle but that means that if 5 cars go through the stage but the slowest sets a time that is very slow the rest of the field gets heavily penalised through no fault of their own.
Seems a bit bizarre to me given that the penalty for not completing the stage at all is 5 mins onto the fastest time. There must be more to it than that.
Now if they added 5 mins to the SLOWEST time posted in the same car group that would make more sense.
>> Edited by LongQ on Tuesday 24th January 17:44
Seems a bit bizarre to me given that the penalty for not completing the stage at all is 5 mins onto the fastest time. There must be more to it than that.
Now if they added 5 mins to the SLOWEST time posted in the same car group that would make more sense.
>> Edited by LongQ on Tuesday 24th January 17:44
Flat in Fifth said:
Loeb goes off, fails to finish a stage and the maximum he gets is so derisory that he still manages to finish second.
Further proof that
a) WRC is rallying for the playstation generation, oops crashed press reset and go.
I was pretty impressed with Loeb and im not sure any of the other drivers would be able to fight back from an off under super rally rules but I think the time penalty isnt large enough for a restart.
LongQ said:
Seems a bit bizarre to me given that the penalty for not completing the stage at all is 5 mins onto the fastest time. There must be more to it than that.
The actual reg is here
That link leads you to revision 3 of the championship SSRs and on page 2 of the pdf see...
para 3.5.3 (a)
Any crew which has retired from Leg 1 and/or Leg 2 may re-start the Rally from the start of the next leg. However, the crew will be penalised with a 5-minute penalty added to the fastest time of the drivers’ priority group (P1, P2, P3) for each missed stage which shall include the special stage or Super Special Stage on which the crew has retired. Should retirement occur after the last special stage or Super Special Stage, the crew will nonetheless be deemed to have missed that last special stage or Super Special Stage. For non-priority drivers, this 5-minute time penalty will be added to the fastest time achieved in its class.
Finally just to make what I accept is a rather silly point, someone could, in theory if not in practice, have taken the 5 minute penalty on each and every stage and still not finished last in the classification.
Stage 12 must have been interesting - many competitors with the same time so I guess something tactical going on there.
On other stages it seems one can find people who have retired getting faster times than those who have clearly had problems but struggled through to finish. All very bizarre.
On other stages it seems one can find people who have retired getting faster times than those who have clearly had problems but struggled through to finish. All very bizarre.
Thanks for the responses. Five minutes is not enough to me. Lets say you have a long stage you have a small off and a puncture or the turbo blows, your car could complete the stage but not within five minutes of the leader. Best 'racing' solution would be to have a permanent off claim the super-rally rules time of winner plus 5 minutes, fix the car and carry on from there.
Daft!
Daft!
Flat in 5th - I am in total agreement.
Have posted similar feelings myself on another forum (10/10ths).
The current state of things (regs and entries) is a disgrace and the sport has been emasculated by the organisers, purely for the sake of (dwindling) TV ratings.
Dave Richards should be ashamed of himself for what's happended to the sport. Even if ITV was to show the full Irish championship there would be more WRC cars and more action.
How can that be?
Have posted similar feelings myself on another forum (10/10ths).
The current state of things (regs and entries) is a disgrace and the sport has been emasculated by the organisers, purely for the sake of (dwindling) TV ratings.
Dave Richards should be ashamed of himself for what's happended to the sport. Even if ITV was to show the full Irish championship there would be more WRC cars and more action.
How can that be?
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