Rally

[dani]

Hey everyone! Well this is just a question to people who actually follow rally (I would if I could, but mostly just read a little about it in Autosport when I get the time, I think I could really get to like it given half a chance! Well anyway, today I was talking to this guy in my German class and he says that some of the rally stages might be cancaelled due to spectators getting in the way of cars. Is this true? and if it is, I thought that spectators were always a problem, why are they picking now to deal with it?
Thanks.

[beefburger]

I wish I could watch Rally too! I was never massively into it and never followed it like I do F1, but I had the opportunity to in the UK and whenever I accidentally caught it on, I would watch it, and I thik its getting better and better as a spectacle!

As for the spectator problem, well, I havent heard the news that courses are being scrapped but I know that some spectators are increasingly putting themselves in dangerous positions making it difficult for the drivers to commit through some sections!

As to why they are only doing anything now? well, the world is getting more safety conscious I suppose.

I guess Senny is the best person to give you the answer to your question though.

[Henrik]

I can confirm that there indeed some stages that get cancelled because there are too many spectators.

I think the reason this is happening now (actually they have been doing it on occasion since a few years) is that there are more and more spectators, and organisers are more conscious of the danger than in the past. Another factor is that the races have been shortened. Not as much distance is covered as before, which means that the spectaors become more grouped together.

I would say it is not a bad thing.

[dani]

ok cool, thanks you guys. Yeah whenever I would watch rally in England I'd think to myself "bloody hell, that spectator has a death wish." I guess it's a good thing, I just hope that rally doesn't ever become like F1 in terms of spectator viewing. The thing that's cool about rally is how close you can actually get and I also like the legnth of the thing. I really hope that eventually we don't see a whole rally consisting of only several special stages. (you know where 2 drivers go head to head in front of a crowd.) When I return to england I'd like to see the RAC rally, just to get that excperience!!!
ok thanks and take care!

[Senninha]

Hi Dani, Beef, Henrik....

I think what Henrik was saying was right, the stages are shorter, and it is thus easier to get into the stages at all points - one of the things you seemed to get before was that you would only get a few poeple in the middle of the stages, now it's only about maybe 4-5 miles to the centre.

The main problem with Catalunya though, seemed to be that the spectators were taking their cars through the stage, getting to the middle of it, and finding no where to park, so parking directly on the stage, where the rally cars would drive.  This was the problem with the stage that led to the retirement of Carlos Sainz... if you saw any pics of it, you would see that from above, there was very little room for the wrc cars to pass through... in Sainz's case, he 'swerved' the car slightly to avoid one car, and then hit another one.. ending his rally... the other stages were cancelled to avoid this...

I think this has been a major problem over the past few years,. as Henrik says, with the shortening of stages, and the increased popularity... Also worth mentioning.. I think for example.. the RAC Rally GB, having been practicially moved to wales.. you have all the people who used to go to the Kielder forests in Northumberland who have to travel all the way to see the rally.. you have lots of people travelling long distances (by car only really), and these people may have walked in the past onto the stages, maybe a few miles from their home... but certainly, increased popularity, and decreased stages (many of them repeated) are to blame here... I think it is now up to the FIA to sort it out... why oh why must we always rely on them....

[imull]

the main problem is the phase "TV friendly".

The bosses in charge of the wrold rally championship are now really pushing WRC onto TV. Unlike circuit racing they need plenty of cameras as cars obviously only gothrough each corner once (maybe 2 or 3 times tops) in a whole event.

They are therefore trying to condense the route to make it easier to film. This means that, although there are probably no more spectators they are crammed into a smalled distance. The Network Q rally GB used to cover a couple of thousand miles in all. Now it is a few hundred miles.

Spectators like to be close to the action and mixing this with the number of people out in the forests can cause stages to be cancelld.

It happened in the 80's with the Group B cars (they used to do Pikes Peak as well - Audi Quattro, Pugeot T16). These cars were amazingly quick and powerful (though slower overall than todays cars!) The T16 was going to have over 750bhp from its one 1.8L engine the season tha it was banned becasue of increasing spectator deaths and also competitor deaths...

[JWK]

Speaking of this, does anybody know what the death toll is like in rally? I mean, at the latest rally i saw Marcus Gronholm(i think...may have been someone else) crash and flip directly over the head of a spectator!

I have been watching rally more and more recently, and i really like the fact that it is more driver-orientated(...hmmm, for some reason i can't remember whether 'orientated' should be oriented or not)

When a car breaks down half way through a stage, it is up to the driver to fix it, if possible. A blown tyre?: again its the drivers domain.

Rally requires more of a "renaissance driver" then F1

The original question... Yeah, condensed stages, higher audience numbers

[imull]

the death toll is not very high but it does happen. When I say "not very" i mean that there probably on average about  3 competitor deaths a year that make the news.

However, Ireland has had a bad run over the last year or so. There have been a couple of the big drivers killed in testing.

Motorsport in general, however, is statistically one of the safest sports in the world.