Williams’ team driver and rally legend Carlos Sainz’s son naturally followed rallying when he was young, but Formula 1 very clearly won out. The younger Sainz feels that the World Rally Championship still lacks a television product that can reach the wider public.
The WRC has its own RallyTV service, but it appears Sainz Junior hopes for something even more accessible.
“Unfortunately for rallying, there’s still not a good TV format to watch it. You follow rally by going to stages or by following live timing. But it hasn’t managed to sell the product well in terms of finding a TV format for it,” Sainz Jr claims in Williams’ own Team Torque podcast.
“I believe that if they succeeded in that, rallying would skyrocket because it’s such an incredible sport.”
In addition to RallyTV broadcasts, the WRC introduced the More Than Machine series last season, which in a way imitates the hugely popular Drive to Survive series about Formula 1. Last season, the rally series followed only the M-Sport Ford team, but this year all three WRC teams have been included.
In Finland and some other countries, rallying enjoys great popularity, but the situation is entirely different in, for example, Southern Europe. Sainz Jr brings up an example from his own childhood.
“When I was growing up in Spain, Fernando Alonso was on television. We all followed how he won races with Renault and world titles. At that point, my father had just stopped rallying and had won his championships ten years earlier. Rallying was, of course, a big thing, but it wasn’t shown on television. That’s why I could never fall in love with rallying,” Sainz Jr explains.
“I was never able to watch my father drive rallies. I might have gone to one rally a year, but you couldn’t fall in love with the sport like that. Instead, I fell in love with Formula 1, because it was shown on television every weekend. When my father was at home, we would wake up together to watch Formula 1.”
The younger Sainz owns rally cars himself and has driven now and then. Recently, he also had the chance to try his father’s Dakar machine, an experience that left a deep impression on the Formula star.
“A couple of months ago I tried my father’s Dakar car, the Ford. It was one of the best, if not the best, experiences of my life. Perhaps one day I need to try Dakar myself,” Sainz Junior hints.
The first outlet to report on Sainz’s rally comments was the DirtFish website.
