For years, WRC events have followed a similar schedule: the rally typically starts on Thursday with a super special stage, followed by full days of stages on Friday and Saturday, and a half-day on Sunday to wrap up the weekend.
Often, rally days are long, with hundreds of kilometres in both special stages and road sections. This means a hectic, sleep-deprived weekend for drivers, who also spend time studying stage footage to prepare.
Last weekend, two-time world champion Kalle Rovanperä enjoyed a much more relaxed rally experience. Rovanperä took part in the Fiorio Cup in Italy, where he competed in four short stages on Cesare Fiorio’s estate. The Finnish driver claimed victory alongside his mother in the compact event, which featured six car crews.
Read more: Kalle Rovanperä celebrated victory with his mother – “We really had to drive fast”
Rovanperä hopes the pace could be calmer in WRC events as well.
“Rally organizers need to make it more compact: not so early starts, not so late finishes. Then people can interact with the drivers when they are not super busy or tired and angry all the time,” Rovanperä explained, according to DirtFish.
“Everybody can have a bit of time midday and end of the day to enjoy something else than sitting in the car all the time.”
Rovanperä believes time should be put to more productive use than long liaisons. While rallies typically cover slightly over 300 kilometres of special stages, liaisons can easily add up to over a thousand kilometres.
“I understand it’s not everywhere that you can find three stages in a small area, but you need to take it in that direction. There are many rallies where we do one day of rallying on small area but then one region is giving sponsor money to the rally, so we drive a 150-kilometer road section each way for one stage – so the day would have be over at 5 pm but now it’s 10 pm,” Rovanperä illustrated with an example.
According to Rovanperä, the International Automobile Federation (FIA) should address this by changing the regulations. He pointed out that rally organisers currently have significant freedom in designing the route.
“It needs to fit inside certain time frame per day, this many kilometers, whatever. And that’s how you should do it,” Rovanperä asserted.
“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.”
