Loeb 8 time WRC champion.

Guerrilla · 14 Nov 2011 at 09:09

I don't think WRC is particularly popular on here as there is no thread already (that i could find anyway

)...

Sébastien Loeb won his 8th WRC Championship in a row at the GB rally

Truely amazing acheivement regardless of your chosen discipline. Puts him ahead of Schumi and Rossi in their respective title wins.

I'm not sure too many of you followed it this year, but personally have really enjoyed it, especially with the recent no finishes for loeb really closed the gap on him.
I still feel when watching it WRC struggles to find a balance of how much of the stages to show.

boxman2000 · 14 Nov 2011 at 09:39

Used to love watching it on TV, can't seem to find good coverage these days.

Loeb is class but shows what a good team/car can do for you as well. Don't really see anyone in a position to take Loeb's crown anytime soon though.

I'm a bit of a Latvala fan after Grönholm's retirement.

Guerrilla · 14 Nov 2011 at 11:17

Yea the ESPN coverage has been ok but not brilliant.

I like Lavala too, he has really come on leaps and bounds this season, glad to see him get a win in Wales too

Skeeter · 14 Nov 2011 at 11:25

There would be a lot more interest on here if the coverage of it wasn't completely shocking.

This was arguably the most important season for WRC for over a decade, with new rules, 3 new cars, and a new manufacturer joining the sport. It was in their interest to promote the hell out of the sport and put it firmly back on the global stage.

As it happened, I doubt most people were even aware that the UK round was at the weekend.

Tute · 14 Nov 2011 at 11:28

WRC is basically what F1 would be if you took away Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Renault.

Some team running around winning at an utter canter because nobody else is remotely competitive.

For me, WRC died a long time before Loeb even appeared on the scene.

Guerrilla · 14 Nov 2011 at 11:29

Yea definitely, it really isn't promoted very well. I forgot it was on a few weekends, but luckily had it on series link, only realised when i sat down and looked through the recordings.

Being hidden away on ESPN really doesn't help either.

Skeeter · 14 Nov 2011 at 11:43

Tute said:
WRC is basically what F1 would be if you took away Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Renault.

Some team running around winning at an utter canter because nobody else is remotely competitive.

For me, WRC died a long time before Loeb even appeared on the scene.

Lol, way to prove my point.

You know there was only an 8 point gap between 1st and second in the championship going into the final round?

You also know that Ford and Citroen are 2 of the biggest and most successful teams in the history of Rallying?

This is the problem. The sport has such low coverage that peoples knowledge of the sport is low, and as a result they just assume that Citroen are some minow team nobody is interested in and Loeb is just waltzing his way to championships with no competition.

There is actually some great racing and great technology going on in WRC (I can't wait for 300bhp 1.6l turbo's to be filling road cars), but nobody is watching it.

Duke · 14 Nov 2011 at 11:51

Never hear anything about it, didn't even know Loeb was still going! Shame really as although I was never a massive rally fan, I did enjoy watching it if I came across the highlights coverage.

Davefran · 14 Nov 2011 at 11:59

Bring back Group B, that's when Rallying was truly exciting ;-)

)

Skeeter · 14 Nov 2011 at 12:05

Davefran said:
Bring back Group B, that's when Rallying was truly exciting )

Spiralling uncontrolled budgets, multiple driver and spectator deaths, and cars that are slower than modern WRC cars with no real world road car relevance...

Yeah, sounds like a great idea.

Group B had its day, but its over now.

englishpremier · 14 Nov 2011 at 13:56

Used to enjoy watching WRC but the series died along time ago for me when most of the manufacturers left.

Still 8 times champion, is a great achievement - The FIA still won't give him a super licence though

DRZ · 14 Nov 2011 at 14:09

Skeeter said:
cars that are slower than modern WRC cars with no real world road car relevance...

WRC has had 25 years of development since then. Given unlimited pots of cash you could bet your house that a modern Group B set of rules would leave WRC cars for dust. You might even manage to keep people safe with the modern tech too.

It might be an apocryphal tale but Henri Toivonen supposedly got his Lancia Delta S4 around Estoril in a time that would have put him on the 3rd row of that year's F1 grid. Unfortunately he was killed driving a Group B car so he isn't around to tell the story. I wonder where Loeb would stick his car on an F1 grid today?

FWIW the Delta S4 was a 1.8 delivering 480bhp, so not a million miles from the 300bhp 1.6l cars you speak of

Road car relevance in that they basically pioneered the modern systems used today.

ringo747 · 14 Nov 2011 at 14:13

I used to watch WRC but not got the slightest interest anymore. I only go to spectate at the local rallies for a bit of fun.

I do think Loeb is absolutely fantastic but I'm not sure how he'd stack up against the likes of Makinen, Burns, McRae, Sainz and all those guys who were driving 10 years ago. That was proper rallying where the driver did more work than the car.

I'm not old enough to remember Group B in the flesh but watching the videos of it it looks something else.

Skeeter · 14 Nov 2011 at 14:43

DRZ said:
snip

Fair, you can make them safe and make them relevant, but what do you do about the massive uncontrolled costs of an open specification? We have already lost lots of manufacturers from both WRC and F1 due to costs, and the current regulations are quite restrictive.

Don't get me wrong, bottomless budgets to feed unregulated specifications would produce some truly epic machinery, but in the real world, its just never going to happen.

Personally, I think the current spec for WRC makes sense and is the right direction to bring people back. And it seems to be working, VW are joining next year and IIRC there are others mooted for 2014.

But alas, without a Sky subscription I wont be following it

DRZ · 14 Nov 2011 at 15:08

Yeah, with the world as it is at the moment there is no scope for budgetless competition but you can dream!

Having said that, if WRC had the profile that F1 has, you could end up with Group B style machinery as I'm sure that even with the RRA spending levels, F1 budgets dwarf even the old Group B spending.

They need a Bernie Ecclestone type character to really drive the commercial side of things so that the money comes back and they can spend fortunes on it all.

Skeeter · 14 Nov 2011 at 15:11

I love how people **** Bernie off as some sort of selfish devil only interested in destroying F1, yet when you look at it, F1 is only as big as it is now because of the efforts of him and FOM.

Is there even a commercial management side to WRC, or is it entirely run by the FIA?

It might not be an entirely good idea though, WRC fell off the public radar when it went from terrestrial to Sky TV, and Bernie is taking F1 that way...

Tute · 14 Nov 2011 at 19:49

Skeeter said:
Lol, way to prove my point.

You know there was only an 8 point gap between 1st and second in the championship going into the final round?

Only because Loeb had a mid-season wobble, the likes of which he's had before and still nobody's managed to beat him at the end.

You also know that Ford and Citroen are 2 of the biggest and most successful teams in the history of Rallying?

Again, so what? You're trying to disprove my point by proving another, totally unrelated point? Easyrider, is that you?

This is the problem. The sport has such low coverage that peoples knowledge of the sport is low, and as a result they just assume that Citroen are some minow team nobody is interested in and Loeb is just waltzing his way to championships with no competition.

Citroen are not a minnow team - I never said that. But Loeb is a mid-sized fish in a pond of tiny ones. Sure, some of the ones like Hirvonen, are willing to have a go at him. But at the end of the day, you could bet your house on Loeb taking it at the end of the season.

There is actually some great racing and great technology going on in WRC (I can't wait for 300bhp 1.6l turbo's to be filling road cars), but nobody is watching it.

There might well be great technology (although personally i'd be more interested if we got the 2L engines back) but nobody is going to watch it unless you have the teams competing. And where are the likes of Mitsubishi, Subaru, Toyota?

Kerming · 15 Nov 2011 at 08:25

Skeeter said:
As it happened, I doubt most people were even aware that the UK round was at the weekend.

your telling me, Im a serious petrol head and even I didn't have a clue. Not to change the subject but the same thing has to be said with the FIA GT1 World Championship, since silverstone Iv forgotten that series existance.

Skeeter · 15 Nov 2011 at 08:51

Tute, the new regulations are designed to bring manufacturers back into the sport, and I can see how they should work. But it just highlights the major flaw of a complete lack of promotion for this year and the new regs. Manufacturers are interested in regulations they like and competition against their competitors infront of a massive audience of potential customers. WRC has the former sorted, but has completely failed in the latter.

Tute · 15 Nov 2011 at 09:51

Totally agree with that. It would help to try promoting it properly for starters - as has been mentioned, too many people didn't even know Rally GB was happening.

I still stand by my points - for me, Loeb could win 18 WRC titles but I still wouldn't consider him among the greats as there's no proper pressure on him. Sure, he crashed out at the weekend but Hirvonen was already gone himself (although it would have been interesting had Hirvonen won given Loeb's "controversial" collision!).

The FIA need to decide if they want to push the WRC back to the time when it was great, or let it die. Because at the moment they're effectively killing it while they make up their minds.

A shame, at this point ten years ago i'd have preffered to watch the WRC over even the F1. But nowadays there's no doubt as to which is the more exciting sport.