Split decision
Posted by Nick Trott at 3:30PM on Thursday 03 May, 2007 7 Comments
I can't help feeling that recently, the World Rally Championship has become a little, well, formulaic.
Rallies have become something of a two-horse race; Sebastien Loeb in the Citroen and Marcus Gronholm in the Ford Focus.
Sure, there have been (well-deserved) exceptions, like Mikko Hirvonen's wins in Australia and Norway and flashes of a return to form for Petter Solberg but largely it's the Marcus 'n' Seb show.
Undoubtedly, these two are in a class of their own but a pattern has started to form and I don't like it. And I reckon we may well see it again this weekend, when the WRC lands in Argentina.
It goes something like this...
Day One: Marcus and Seb go at it like madmen. Marcus sets the pace but, little by little, Loeb reins him in and by the end of the first day has a slender lead.
This means he is behind Gronholm on the road for the second and third days. Which, in turn, means he knows, thanks to the split timing information relayed into his car from several locations in each stage, exactly how fast Gronholm is going.
So Loeb can adjust his pace accordingly. He seems to be able to be a little quicker or a lot quicker, depending on how badly he wants to mess with the Finn's head.
On rally after rally, on the second and third days, Loeb has started each stage slower than Gronholm but by the end, is three, five, ten seconds faster, eking out the lead until Gronholm accepts second place is the best he can hope for.
Technology and strategy combined with superlative driving skills, certainly. But is it sport? No, not to me it isn't.
Rallying should be about drivers going as fast as they can, not as fast as they know they need to. The fact that every subsequent driver knows just how fast the one in front has gone has robbed rallying of its very essence.
Unfortunately, there seems very little that can be done about it, because to effectively prevent split timing information reaching the drivers would be almost impossible.
So we have to live with it and instead of immense scraps, enjoy the spectacle. If only we could actually find it on telly...
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7 Comments for "Split decision"
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Couldn't disagree more! The mark of a true racer is to know when to push rather than take risks unecesarily and end up not finishing at all.
Instead of using an aggregate split time, perhaps the WRC could consider deciding the overall winner of the rally, by adding together the total number of individual stage positions. For example, if a driver won stage one, they would recieve 14 points, whereas the last placed driver would recieve 1 point. At the end of the rally, the total number of points would be added in order to decide upon a winner. This system would not rely upon split times, which would make the entire rally exciting from start to finish.
Oh you guys have that problem too? I thought it was just us in the States that can't see WRC on TV.
Sure it's sort of a cliche, but they're doing what they're supposed to do; pilot gravel shredding rockets. The only way to end this is by finding drivers that is as good or better than them .
I agree completely, the competition seems to have left WRC. Mow its just Citroen and Ford with little glimpses of Subaru from time to time. Hate to say it but it's becoming as predictable as the later Schumacher years in F1. Bring back McRae, Makkinen, Sainz and the rest!
Well, I disagree with your views on what sport is. The same resource management goes for marathon too or other types of athletics competitions and all the contestants regard always the performance of the other contestants.
Going full monty all the time means risking a lot all the time and minimizing your chance to finish the stage. Minimizing the chances means increasing the occurence of crashes and accidents and who wants that after all?
Managing your opponent is part of the deal - goes the same for any kind of competition you can think of - from economics to karate or even chess. It is a crucial part of the game.
Go Seb and Marcus!
I have to agree with regard to your views of the Marcus 'n' Seb show - F1 proved that you only needed ONE Micheal Schumacher to make things seem less competitive and more, well, boring. WRC seems to have two.
Whilst it's good to see a real dogfight of a race between two highly skilled rallyists, you can't help but wonder where everyone else went. Even as a 19 year old, I can tell you that racing is more to do with strategy than foot-to-floor tactics.
Whether you choose an ideal drift tactic for cornering, or slow down more to keep grip, whether you choose to change up a gear when you engine redlines, despite being not far from an oncoming corner, or to tough it out until you get to the corner... all of this is what racing is about. Not whether 'my car is faster than your car'.
Plus, you have to factor in human concentration. You can go all-out for about half an hour at the most, before fatigue sets in.
When that happens, you're more prone to mistakes, and the more tired you are, the more mistakes you'll make.
It's better to go at about 75 - 80 per cent until the last lap, and THEN put all you have left into it.