Rally night stages?
Discussion
Just been looking back on some old rally clips and films and watched quite a few stages taking place at night but I can't remember the last time I saw a current WRC event with a night stage in it. Am I imagining it or are they no longer allowed to do night stages under some daft FIA ruling?
FourWheelDrift said:
Just been looking back on some old rally clips and films and watched quite a few stages taking place at night but I can't remember the last time I saw a current WRC event with a night stage in it. Am I imagining it or are they no longer allowed to do night stages under some daft FIA ruling?
Used to love night stages..I spent may a night sleeping in my car waiting for the stages to open. Of course having my then girlfriend with me seemed to make the wait even better
Phil
FourWheelDrift said:
Just been looking back on some old rally clips and films and watched quite a few stages taking place at night but I can't remember the last time I saw a current WRC event with a night stage in it. Am I imagining it or are they no longer allowed to do night stages under some daft FIA ruling?
Sad really, but the new forshortened WRC leaves out a lot of what made rallying great.
>> Edited by hammerwerfer on Saturday 12th November 22:38
Night stages? We can't have that now can we? How can people watch on TV if it's dark. Rallying is a shadow of what it was even six or seven years ago. The current generation of cars are fantastic, but the rallies are so short and made for TV that a single mistake means you may as well park it. A sport I'm rapidly losing interest in...
th cars need 450bhp IMHO, then they would be great ( but built like a tank also) it would be a good idea to get rid of flappy paddle gearboxes etc.
the rallies are ok, just a bit to sanitised, would like to see the rac ( rally gb ) move north and be based at newcastle and do kielder etc.
the rallies are ok, just a bit to sanitised, would like to see the rac ( rally gb ) move north and be based at newcastle and do kielder etc.
Well at least they have moved it back to the end of the championship calender, December.....well for one year as then for some odd reason WRC goes head to head with the footie, doing a Sept - May Calender!!
Its a shame such a great sport can be totally destroyed, would be great to see it running around the whole of the UK again.
Its a shame such a great sport can be totally destroyed, would be great to see it running around the whole of the UK again.
racefan_uk said:
It would be a big step in the right direction if the Rally of Great Britain actually visited somewhere other than just Wales... wouldn't it?
Probably some numpty lentilist stopped them using Kielder Forest. The Woburn Abbey stages used to be good too as were the Silverstone stages and superspecial. Now they go to Wales and the Scamerati have a field day.
racefan_uk said:
It would be a big step in the right direction if the Rally of Great Britain actually visited somewhere other than just Wales... wouldn't it?
Or is it just me that thinks that's a bloody stupid idea?
Rally GB...
Here Here!! Memories of travelling around Yorkshire/Wales/Nottingham,Lake District,Scotland & the whole of Wales! are but a dim and distant memory.....bring back proper Rallying!
Steve
>> Edited by sb-1 on Wednesday 16th November 15:24
Someone recently criticised Loeb for referring to a 'race' rather than a 'rally'. Could have been something lost in the translation I suppose but I rather think he was being quite accurate.
The Lombard Revival Rally looks like it may be fun even if the cars are hardly supercars. In fact that might make it even better as time goes by.
The Lombard Revival Rally looks like it may be fun even if the cars are hardly supercars. In fact that might make it even better as time goes by.
Aye sucks don't it, I wouldn't mind the move to these compact Rallies (all in the interests of TV and all) but the TV coverage is feckin crap.
Especailly if you follow the three WRC programs on Eurosport, 90% of the time the Sky+ box fails to record it properly as some previous tossy football or boxing program has overrun.
When it does record, any thing on Leg 2 or 3 is consumed with 40% of the previous leg in montages. Fecking sucks, these bastards are out gathering hours of rally footage and then when it comes to the final cut, they just use the same stuff from the day before.
I can understand how they've moved to these compact rallies to save on costs, lets face it when you look at the amount of kit the major teams turn up with at service park, there's no way they are gonna move it all to different locations over a 3 day rally.
Aye, it's a shame, rallying has changed forever, and not necessarily for the best, it will never go back to what it was, but they could do so much more with what they have.
Especailly if you follow the three WRC programs on Eurosport, 90% of the time the Sky+ box fails to record it properly as some previous tossy football or boxing program has overrun.
When it does record, any thing on Leg 2 or 3 is consumed with 40% of the previous leg in montages. Fecking sucks, these bastards are out gathering hours of rally footage and then when it comes to the final cut, they just use the same stuff from the day before.
I can understand how they've moved to these compact rallies to save on costs, lets face it when you look at the amount of kit the major teams turn up with at service park, there's no way they are gonna move it all to different locations over a 3 day rally.
Aye, it's a shame, rallying has changed forever, and not necessarily for the best, it will never go back to what it was, but they could do so much more with what they have.
This kicks off in Oxford tonight and has a few night stages by the looks of things: www.endurorally.com/extra78.html
next years round of the WRC in Wales is 1-3 december. go outside at 5pm today and visability isnt great, couple that with the mist in the welsh hills and it should be an absolute cracker of an event. They were coming through Rheola around 4pm with another stage to go IIRC. I'll be getting a three day ticket thats for sure!
racefan_uk said:
It would be a big step in the right direction if the Rally of Great Britain actually visited somewhere other than just Wales... wouldn't it?
Or is it just me that thinks that's a bloody stupid idea?
Rally GB...
The reason the 'Wales Rally GB' is in Wales is because the Welsh development agency pay huge sums of money to keep it there however there are much better events going on around the country instead of just packed into a little corner of Wales, take any of the ANCRO rounds of the national championship, you regularly get a lot more WRC cars on those events than on that Welsh 12 car
Kielder is still used for rallying a couple of times a year, the Pirelli and the Border Counties both use Kielder and just last week saw the second running of the Roger Albert Clark (RAC) rally, a 4 day event which visits Yorkshire, Cumbria, SW Scotland and Kielder forest complete with night stages and early (5.30am) morning stages Here are some shots from Tuesday in Kielder
Stig Blomqvist
Mark Higgins
Steve Bannister
Charlie Taylor
and as I posted in the other thread, have a look here
www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=223352&f=109&h=0
for some shots from the Croft stage where you can see the Lancia Stratos that started the event but blew an engine on Monday (I think!)
Cheers
Ian
to be honest i like the format of the WRC events. having everything in one place makes it easier for teh spectators who actually go to the events rather than the ones who stay at home and moan about how "its not like it was in the old days". You are right, its not like it was in the old days, but then very little is in this day and age.
i am sorry if you dont like the centralised location format but it does work for spectator and it does offer good value for money if you make a weekend out of it. OK, a few of the great stages are no longer used but They had to do something to bring rallying to the people and it worked, how many were at the millennium stadium for the stage this year? i think it was about 30,000. hopefully some of those will be on a special stage next year.
the centralised location also helps the marshals, the TV crews, the teams and the drivers.
i am sorry if you dont like the centralised location format but it does work for spectator and it does offer good value for money if you make a weekend out of it. OK, a few of the great stages are no longer used but They had to do something to bring rallying to the people and it worked, how many were at the millennium stadium for the stage this year? i think it was about 30,000. hopefully some of those will be on a special stage next year.
the centralised location also helps the marshals, the TV crews, the teams and the drivers.
pablo said:
to be honest i like the format of the WRC events. having everything in one place makes it easier for teh spectators who actually go to the events rather than the ones who stay at home and moan about how "its not like it was in the old days". You are right, its not like it was in the old days, but then very little is in this day and age.
i am sorry if you dont like the centralised location format but it does work for spectator and it does offer good value for money if you make a weekend out of it. OK, a few of the great stages are no longer used but They had to do something to bring rallying to the people and it worked, how many were at the millennium stadium for the stage this year? i think it was about 30,000. hopefully some of those will be on a special stage next year.
the centralised location also helps the marshals, the TV crews, the teams and the drivers.
It helps TV crews and it helps the teams and drivers have somewhere to sleep in the same place for the event.
As for the spectators... You're having a laugh, aren't you?
I haven't been to see the 'GB' round of the WRC since it moved to Wales. Why? Becuase it's too f-ing far to go. Especially when I used to have Donington, Clumber Park and others virtually on my doorstep. As for the people in Scotland and the North East of the country. Sorry, but you're deluded. Why would I want to spend a weekend in Wales when I could have spent the weekend following it around the entire country (like I used to with my old man years ago).
You can see the hype of the modern day WRC. It's not a patch on the old RAC, because its nowhere near as tough on the cars, crews, drivers and co-drivers. Same as modern day F1, its sanitised and it's a namby-pamby version of what once was a truly great 'sport'.
it works for the spectator if you are following the rally in that you can see each stage twice, ok not particularly great but if the weather changes then it can be interesting. you can also get to more than one stage in a day and thus, see a lot of the rally over the course of the weekend. The number of people i met this year from Norway and Finland etc who were sleeping in hire cars etc was huge. they were having a blast too. I'm not deluded. I saw thousands of rally fans enjoying themselves, they were there to soak up the atmosphere and watch the best drivers in the world.
Why is it that the WRC format is the same for every other rally in the world (centralised location etc) yet only here you get the Brits moaning that they dont want to spend a weekend in wales becasue its not like it was in the old days. this country suffers from a "i want it the way its always been" mentality in almost everything. F1 has become sanitised but only becasue of other factors eg Ratzenberger and Sennas death but you still get 100,000 at Silverstone each year.
Not sure how you can say that WRC is not a test on the cars or the drivers really, the cars are quicker, average stage speeds are sometiimes unreal and the drivers train far more to deal with it. Maybe it is still the same challenege but the drivers are just better equipped and preperared. I would love to see the return of 400+ special stage miles but it isnt going to happen so try embracing what we have got.
all said with the upmost respect for your side of the argumewnt of course!!
Why is it that the WRC format is the same for every other rally in the world (centralised location etc) yet only here you get the Brits moaning that they dont want to spend a weekend in wales becasue its not like it was in the old days. this country suffers from a "i want it the way its always been" mentality in almost everything. F1 has become sanitised but only becasue of other factors eg Ratzenberger and Sennas death but you still get 100,000 at Silverstone each year.
Not sure how you can say that WRC is not a test on the cars or the drivers really, the cars are quicker, average stage speeds are sometiimes unreal and the drivers train far more to deal with it. Maybe it is still the same challenege but the drivers are just better equipped and preperared. I would love to see the return of 400+ special stage miles but it isnt going to happen so try embracing what we have got.
all said with the upmost respect for your side of the argumewnt of course!!
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