I have read many discussions about why Rally GB is now held in Wales and many of them come out with the same answer, its due to FIA wanting to reduce costs for the teams, maybe if they replaced their blind man/woman (no disrespect meant to blind/partially sighted)who decides on the rally calendar, with someone that can read an atlas, then they could reduce the teams costs considerably (enough even to hold a rally in Wales, England & Scotland). Looking at the calender for next season i can only conclude that the FIA get a large back hander from the freight companies.

If some of you haven't seen the calender yet then please look at the following in amazement:

23-25 Jan Monte Carlo
06-08 Feb Sweden (not too bad both in Europe)
12-14 Mar Mexico (expensive trip to southern Hemisphere)
16-18 Apr New Zealand (not too bad)
14-16 May Cyprus (another expensive trip)
28-30 May Acropolis
11-13 Jun Argentina (another expensive trip)
25-27 Jun Turkey (back to euorpe)
06-08 Aug Finland
20-22 Aug Germany
03-05 Sep Japan (another expensive trip)
17-19 Sep Wales GB (ditto)
01-03 Oct Sardinia
15-17 Oct France
29-31 Oct Spain
12-14 Nov Australia

Can anyone spot the obvious way of saving probably hundreds of thousands of pounds/euro's for the teams???
Bring the rally GB back to the people. It used to be open for so many people to see, having stages throughout middle/northern England & Wales, i remember going to watch it at Chatsworth & Donnington Park years ago, where you didnt have traffic chaos and problems getting hotels because it was accessable to so many in such a large area that you didnt have to all squash into Cardiff or Swansea.
Almost finished whinging!!
Why call it rally Wales GB, do you have to put the GB on the end as foreigners would'nt know where rally Wales was in the world.

There finished, i expect many comments on this topic, maybe you could all re-arrange the rally calender yourselves and email FIA and WRC (or myself and i will forward the most popular to them) and all the WRC teams (maybe they could put pressure on the FIA/WRC to produce logical calendars) with the most commensense/cost effective logical order of the calender.

Common sense, logic and FIA dont fit together that well in a sentence!

yeah i echo that, seeing rally cars in sutton park, right on my doorstep, up at donington, down at silverstone, then came the superspecial as well in later years, day 1 was a wonderfull day :)

the spectator stages opened up the rally to many many people, esp in the midlands, we dont get a hell of a lot of national rallying within 1/2 hours drive, here, so it was fantastic, nothing beats the forrests though, but also nothing beats day 1 spectator stages, especially in the snow! :)

[Edited by A_S - 11/15/2003 3:24:08 PM]

I agree with what youre saying about the calendar to a certain extent but with a minimum of 2 weeks between rounds, what could you group together?

Lets say Argentina and Mexico are the obvious ones.. There would need to be 2 complete sets of equipment sent out from the bases - ie the UK / France - to each country as theres not long enough time to move the equipment by boat from one to the other easily so the most youd be saving is some of the airfares for the service crews, plus youd need extra hotel accomodation abroad for the extra week they would be there so I dont think theres much of a saving at all...

Paul..

the largest savings to be made and the easiest way to get new manufacturers in would be to concentrate on the cars, rather than the events.

We have a situation now where the cars are costing £400K to build, which is a rediculous state of afairs. The WRC rules were designed to reduce the costs of homologating 2500 road versions before competing, but they have now gone full circle and used those rules to create technologically overweight cars that require 3 computer systems just to run.

I could come up with a set of regs that would reduce a huge amount of the costs of the cars, and running the cars, in no time without diluting the spectacle, in fact it would increase it and give the driving tallent more of a say in how the cars perform. They are concentrating on the wrong areas to cut costs at the expense of the health of the WRC's future.

Agreed John...

I do however personally think that gravel crews should be removed as well - I know the teams will claim a safety implication from this - but if everyones in the same boat it might slow them ever so slightly but shouldnt increase the risks significantly..

I dont like the move to the Mille structure and think tweaks to the present event formats can be made to limit costs..

If they started recce on Tuesday and Wednesday with long recce days, scrutineering Thurs AM for works teams and Thurs PM for non works teams with Shakedown running Thursday PM for works teams. Perhaps a ceremonial start on the Thursday evening?

Then have the rally over 3 days starting Friday morning with flexible servicing arrangements rather than centralised servicing with (for example) 1 lorry + 1 van + 8 personnel per car entered to limit servicing costs.

Open up the rules a little to increase the permissable road mileage and stage mileage and make the rally longer with the last TC on Sunday evening at 6pm and the ceremonial finish / podiums at say 8pm.

Not exactly the old days but should be cheaper overall with more mileage and means that teams can arrive on the Monday and leave the following Monday with less personnel.

Paul..

plenty of sense in there. I disagree on the banning of gravel crews though for a couple of reasons.

Firstly they do perform a function for safety, especially on events with changeable conditions. I spoke with Petters crew in Catalunya about Corsica and there were plenty of places on stage where spectators had thrown gravel on the corners, without the checking of the gravel crews its likely many more competitors would not have finished and may have suffered major crashes.

Secondly, the cars are used for recce prior to the event, these cars serve a major function in safety for the crews, they have full cages and rally suspension/tyres/harnesses/seats etc. The idea that they should hire local road cars is laughable. Having driven a lot of the stages on the acropolis, cyprus, finland, catalunya and monte carlo this year in a hire car (except cat where i drove my own impreza), in the most critical areas you would be concentrating on keeping the damn thing in one piece rather than making notes.

the 1000 pistes format is a disaster for the sport, especially spectators who now wont have the oportunity to spectate as many stages or relax after the morning stages with a meal in the local towns, then head for an afternoon stage. It's going to ruin even more the rally experience.

Are freight charges not like Royal Mail, its cheaper to send one large package, rather than several smaller ones i.e send out enough kit to do several rallies at a time ?