2020 Rallying thread (WRC, ERC, other series)

The latest forecast looks to bring some cooler temperatures in the area so let's keep the fingers crossed.

Doesn't look too promising at the moment, it will be a brief spell of slightly colder weather at the beginning of this week.

From Thursday onward it's back to "normal" with mild weather with 2 to 5 degrees with the latest 10 days forecast, rain for Sunday.

There is already talk about reducing the rally to a minimum of 25% of the stage mileage, Saturday's stages can't possibly be run!?

SS 16/17 Likenas is the stage in best condition, will they have to run that stage 3 times (!) and some Mickey Mouse stuff on the RX circuit at Holjes?

It looks highly unlikely that they will be able to run the rally as planned (if at all), they will have to make a difficult decision within the next few days. 

Edit 4 Feb : Historic rally have been cancelled now, it only had 19 cars entered as many had seen where this was going many weeks ago....

Still no firm decision on the main rally, the super special in Karlstad is out of the question, as with all of Saturday stages.

With some - or lot of - luck they might be able to run Friday's stages, once! Then they will rely on Likenas and try to make Torsby super special usable.

Light snow in the area today but it will melt away again, Sunday it still looks like it will rain, and probably Monday too.

Had there been a national rally to be run on the same dates on the same stages it would have been cancelled long ago, like many have.

PS. A quite defensive Rally CEO said today : "We are working towards holding this rally, in some shape or form......"  

Edited by Myhinpaa, 04 February 2020 - 19:47.

The organisers have decided to go ahead, but with a shortened route. All of Saturday's stages will not be used.

Instead they will run Friday's stages on Saturday, but only once, Both days will finish with Torsby super special.

Sunday they will run Likenas twice, the second run will be the powerstage. Total stage mileage 180 k, down from 300.

Still the weather can upset this plan..., but hopefully it will hold. How SS1 will be run remains to be seen.

Timo Rautiainen tells to media that despite of shortened course, full championship points would be granted from Rally Sweden.

The organisers can only hope for the best now, the latest forecast claims rain from Sunday night to noon Monday.

So we will have to see what the verdict is after the recce.... More mild weather for the duration of the rally.

Hänninen is testing the 2021 version of WRC Toyota already....

https://twitter.com/...735318743273472

Riponian Rally scheduled for Sunday has been cancelled due to the forecasted high winds, thanks to Storm Ciara. Any winds over 47mph, and the Forestry Commission close access to their property on safety grounds. 

Tomorrow also sees the start of the BRC, with the Cambrian Rally; already stages have been pulled due to lack of entries in the BRC class; the BTRDA class is healthy enough mind you. 

Tomorrow also sees the start of the BRC, with the Cambrian Rally; already stages have been pulled due to lack of entries in the BRC class

One day - and I hope it is before I finally shuffle off this mortal coil - one day, they will manage to get the BRC rules right. 

It was once the premier national series of the world but thanks to continued bad management by the RAC-MSA and others, it has reached the same level of importance as the Fijian Rally Championship.  And Fiji doesn't have a national championship.

Well the 1st stage is a 2nd shakedown with worn studded tyres on gravel. Pretty pointless, but I guess they needed to run the stage in the rally Hq town. I hope they skip this stage on the other days.

Edited by anyeis, 14 February 2020 - 10:41.

Seems the tyres are lasting better than what was feared, still the studs gets very hot on the gravel sections and the car starts to "float" slightly.

Quite a good video where the interviewer manages to let the man who knows his stuff speak,George Black M-Sport : https://www.youtube....h?v=WG2tQUF6Qgg

Evans and Kalle leaving Ogier behind.. wait what

New car... needs time to adapt

New car... needs time to adapt

Road position, then

30 minutes stage running for day one.  Hardly WRC level is it?  You would get a lot more than that on a single venue rally on an old airfield somewhere.  They should have cancelled the rally and blamed it on corona virus.

30 minutes stage running for day one. Hardly WRC level is it? You would get a lot more than that on a single venue rally on an old airfield somewhere. They should have cancelled the rally and blamed it on corona virus.

Due to the incoming weather with wind and lots of rain from tonight - which will last all of Sunday - Likenas 1 have been cancelled.

This means that Likenas will be only run once, and as the powerstage. This drops the mileage below what's required for full WRC points.

But FIA and the organisers have decided that full points will be given anyhow. Second worst Swedish Rally ever, after '90 cancellation (rally sprint).

Edited by Myhinpaa, 15 February 2020 - 09:41.

Evans is on fire

It's good to have new faces

Due to the incoming weather with wind and lots of rain from tonight - which will last all of Sunday - Likenas 1 have been cancelled.

This means that Likenas will be only run once, and as the Powerstage. This drops the mileage below what's required for full WRC points.

 

But FiA and the organisers have decided that full points will be given anyhow. Second worst Swedish Rally ever, after '90 cancellation (rally sprint).

They decided on full points before the event started, so I guess they have to honour it; but it's all a bit poor. I know the organisers have been put in a predicament, but they can save themselves now by moving the event further north. We can't have this 'will it won't it' run almost every year. If they can't find a suitable venue further north, then there must be other venues (maybe N. America) interested? 

The tiny amount of running a bit of a joke, really. Still some interesting battles up and down the order. Breen matching Neuville in pace despite slowing down for him yesterday, Rovanperä vs Ogier, and Evans running away from everyone despite no matter where he is in the start order.

2 R5 cars from the Finnish national championship wiping the floor with the entire WRC2 field is noticeably awkward for the WRC+ announcers.

Oh look, Rovanpera suddenly drops behind Ogier with only the last stage to go.  Quel surprise. At least Evans should be safe as long as Tanak is between him and Toyota's Chosen One.

Oh look, Rovanpera suddenly drops behind Ogier with only the last stage to go.  Quel surprise. At least Evans should be safe as long as Tanak is between him and Toyota's Chosen One.

You have to earn status 'Chosen One'

Oh look, Rovanpera suddenly drops behind Ogier with only the last stage to go.  Quel surprise. At least Evans should be safe as long as Tanak is between him and Toyota's Chosen One.

Did you actually watch the stage? It looked like Rovanperä was pushing as hard as he has been all day. He’s half a second behind Ogier and the pair of them exchanged positions twice earlier today already. 

On the contrary, yesterday Hyundai told Breen to let Neuville ahead. He slowed on the last stage with co-driver counting seconds.

Edited by tormave, 15 February 2020 - 15:48.

They decided on full points before the event started, so I guess they have to honour it; but it's all a bit poor. I know the organisers have been put in a predicament, but they can save themselves now by moving the event further north. We can't have this 'will it won't it' run almost every year. If they can't find a suitable venue further north, then there must be other venues (maybe N. America) interested? 

They don't have to move the rally. But they have to skip the trip down to Karlstad, as that takes up over 210km of road-km. Remember there is a limit on the amount of transport as well. If they use those 210km to go a bit norther and/or higher from Torsby there's no issue. They might have to go away from some famous Rally Sweden stages though. As we saw, Mads was testing the Citroën R5 in proper snow conditions, that wasn't more than 40-ish kilometres from some of the Swedish stages that was cancelled. So the roads with snow and ice are in the area.

I took this picture 40km from SS2/5 on Thursday. The roads around were packed with snow and ice, on roads used daily, even around schools it hadn't worn down.

With that being said, even on Friday the roads held up amazingly well. Granted, there was no snowbanks, but the roads have probably never had so little ruts in Rally Sweden, and they didn't really struggle with loss of studs either because of the temperature. It got a bit colder than expected - I felt that myself as I slept in a hammock outside...

The roads held fine, it was solid ice left after they had gone through as well. The interesting thing was the gravel sections, when the small upper layer of gravel were gone, they dug out some ice due to the ground freezing properly. I honestly think they could've done 2 runs on Friday, and then done another run on the same stages on Saturday without too much issues as the last picture is taken after Saturdays run.

Edited by Myrvold, 15 February 2020 - 21:07.

Did you actually watch the stage? It looked like Rovanperä was pushing as hard as he has been all day. He’s half a second behind Ogier and the pair of them exchanged positions twice earlier today already. 
 
On the contrary, yesterday Hyundai told Breen to let Neuville ahead. He slowed on the last stage with co-driver counting seconds.

Let's see what happens at this corner during the power stage... 

Oh look, Rovanpera suddenly drops behind Ogier with only the last stage to go.  Quel surprise. At least Evans should be safe as long as Tanak is between him and Toyota's Chosen One.

Despite his little rookie mistakes Rovanpera is clearly "The Chosen One". Toyota's and the Rally Gods'.

Oh look, Rovanpera suddenly drops behind Ogier with only the last stage to go.  Quel surprise. At least Evans should be safe as long as Tanak is between him and Toyota's Chosen One.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder if BRG will keep posting this drivel every time Ogier passes another Toyota. He’s 0 for 2 for the season, but hey, it’s a long season, and even a broken clock has it’s moments...

Oh look, Rovanpera suddenly drops behind Ogier with only the last stage to go. Quel surprise. At least Evans should be safe as long as Tanak is between him and Toyota's Chosen One.

‪Anyone else not able to watch WRC+ on a mobile or tablet with headphones? There’s sound, but the image disappears under a “Casting to” screen.‬ I thought maybe they’d fixed it since Monte, but apparently they haven’t. ‪Very annoying.‬ ‬

The issue is with bluetooth headsets with the iOS app. I reported it during to them Monte. The replied they were already aware, and that they’d have fix in the next release. Wired headset works fine. Super annoying, I agree.

Brilliant drive Evans. I apologise doubting you going in Toyota but seems it is a match made in heaven.

Rovanperä: the youngest powerstage winner in the history. Also beat Loeb into least races (2 vs. 3) before a podium.

Not to mention leaving Ogier behind in dust...

Edited by Jvr, 17 February 2020 - 12:56.

The issue is with bluetooth headsets with the iOS app. I reported it during to them Monte. The replied they were already aware, and that they’d have fix in the next release. Wired headset works fine. Super annoying, I agree.

There must be a lot more to it than that. All I can get this year (on a laptop) is the front page with repeated "loading..." all over the white space. Nothing happening, not bothering to try again. It's interesting to hear that even people working for the series are using ewrc-results.com instead!

Edited by proviz, 16 February 2020 - 12:47.

Brilliant drive Evans. I apologise doubting you going in Toyota but seems it is a match made in heaven.

Rovanperä: the youngest superstage and powerstage winner in the history. Also beat Loeb into least races (2 vs. 3) before a podium.

Not to mention leaving Ogier behind in dust...

Edited by Amz964, 16 February 2020 - 13:09.

Amazing drive by Evans didn't put a foot wrong and is looking very good in the Toyota, but kudos to Rovanpera phonemenal drive by him in only his second event in a full WRC car. Forgive me but didn't Loeb get a podium in his first ever WRC event in San Remo 2001 believe he got 2nd?

Loeb had two races before in an eligible car in 2000.

Amazingly controlled drive by Evans, and Rovanpera impressed even more in a way.

With Lappi being so close behind it was probably too risky to issue team orders. (today...)

I believe Loeb's first WRC rally was '99 Catalunya, then Corsica with more entries before joining Citroén's semi-official S1600 WRC campaign.

Then he had a couple of entries in a WRC Corolla. But his first official works entry in a Citroen Xsara WRC was in '01 San Remo where he came 2nd. O/A.

Likenas and surrounding areas looked miserable today, due to this unseasonable bad weather with lots of rain over the last 24 hrs.

This introduction of central servicing with 3 services pr. day makes the rally much more vulnerable to bad winter conditions.

If they could abandon that and go back to the "cloverleaf" principle + add remote servicing to that they could spread the rally over a larger area.

This would in turn take the rally further north and into other more snow secure areas, but will it happen? I doubt it!

Jean Todt was only waffling on about "climate change" while issuing disguised threats to the organisers about "unacceptable conditions" etc.

After DR made a move on WRC and trying to make it more "TV friendly" degrading it even further towards some sort of "F1 on gravel" it deteriorated.

And even after DR left his Xanadu the new promoters with the help of FIA have only continued to enforce even more damage.

S2000 looked was breath of fresh air for a while but then it was effectively removed from the scene, WRC 2/3 isn't much to get exited about.

JWRC is more like a Fiesta Cup, which suddenly make the days of the Ford Ka Rally Cup something to look back to with fondness...

Edited by Myhinpaa, 16 February 2020 - 14:25.

The WRC2/WRC3 split makes no sense. Östberg can cruise and collect while losing to privateers.

Evans the only Brit to win any Scandinavian International ?

Edited by Fatgadget, 16 February 2020 - 15:05.

I wonder if BRG will keep posting this drivel every time Ogier passes another Toyota. He’s 0 for 2 for the season, but hey, it’s a long season, and even a broken clock has it’s moments...

We shall see.  If you can't see that Ogier, with his many WRC titles and fat pay cheque is going to be Toyota's #1, then I probably can't persuade you.  This time, the stars were not aligned due to the misfortune of Tanak getting between Evans & the other Toyotas.  

The WRC has plenty of history of team orders, sometimes rather blatant and brutal, and if anything, the stakes are higher now than ever.  But, let's wait and see.   I would be delighted to see fair play and peace and love everywhere, but things ain't generally like that.