The WRC has been tackling big questions, especially over the past year. More teams are needed in the top class, and the series also wants to reach a larger audience.
Competition for people’s free time is fierce, and with its current format, WRC rallies fall far behind other options. Today’s mainstream media consumption is increasingly focused on short-form content. This is where the WRC completely diverges from the trend, as the event essentially spans an entire weekend.
If a fan follows the entire rally, it consumes almost all their precious days off. And that leads to a serious rally overload—something I, for one, have experienced 12 times this season. Admittedly, following the event as a rally journalist can be a bit more exhausting than for an average fan, but there are still plenty of similarities.
The fact is that few of us have the time or interest to stare at rally cars on a screen for over 20 hours across a few days. Even for a fan, it feels like a job.
Kalle Rovanperä recently shared his perspective on the hectic and exhausting nature of competition weekends. According to Rovanperä, rallies and routes should be condensed significantly, as there simply aren’t enough hours in the day under the current setup.
“It needs to fit inside certain time frame per day, this many kilometers, whatever. And that’s how you should do it,” Rovanperä stated.
“When you do the days like this, then we can implement more time for other things. But now we have no time to even do our job properly. If we do it like that, we don’t sleep.”
Rovanperä’s point comes from a competitor’s perspective, but he also hit the nail on the head from a broader perspective.
Earlier this week RallyJournal.com published an article about Rovanperä’s comments. The piece sparked an interesting debate in the depths of social media.
Comments came in both for and against. The most common counter-argument was that rallying is meant to be an endurance sport, not a sprint limited to “office hours.”
“Time to go racing then. Rallies are too short now. I agree liaison sections are crap and need changing,” one fan explained their position.
Additionally, some argued that, back in the day, even the RAC Rally ran day and night, with over 50 special stages.
Ah, those were the days!
Rallies were indeed marathon events a few decades ago. But the world, as well as rallying at the highest level, has changed significantly since those days.
Today’s rallies are shorter than in those “good old days.” But the most notable difference is that today’s drivers are true elite athletes.
In the past, drivers might spend time at the Hotel Laajavuori nightclub during rally week. Today’s stars, however, shut themselves in their hotel rooms after each rally day to review videos into the late hours—without raising a single drink.
The sport’s internal culture has undergone a major shift, and WRC rallies have evolved along with it. But outside the rally bubble, the world has transformed even faster.
Could we finally stop the complaints about the “good old days” and look at this realistically? Otherwise, this game will be lost sooner than we think. The WRC format needs adjusting, but definitely not in a longer direction.
The WRC events of the past had their charm and suited their time. But if a similar concept were forced onto modern rallies, the sport might sink even further into the depths and, ultimately, disappear altogether.
