Rally Poland chief Jarosław Noworól has outlined his plans to contain the safety issues that plagued the opening day of the Mikołajki event.
Talking to DirtFish, the chairman of the organizing committee said there would be a bigger police presence on the roads ahead of the stages in an effort to contain a disruptive element he put at around 10% of the total fan numbers.
“We were prepared with more than 70 big spectator [zones],” he said. “We used half of these yesterday and we saw a lot of spectators – 90% of them were standing beautifully but 10% were not.
“I was watching in rally control and I saw people standing in bad places for the first car, then we try to do something and it’s worse for the second car and for the third one, we can see the next people coming from the forest. We are using our communication channels to talk with them.
“Now we talked with the police and we are talking now and I hope there will be – on every stage – a special police car inside the caravan of our rally organized cars, close to [FIA safety delegate] Michèle Mouton’s car. We talked also with safety stage commanders to put – in these difficult places – the best safety marshals.”
Noworól denied it was a lack of preparation from the Polish organizers, adding: “When I am talking to Michèle [Mouton] she says we have more than enough. For example, on the Stańczyki stage, the longest one, there were 290 safety marshals.
“I don’t know what to do. This is a mentality of the spectators from this region, also a mentality of Polish spectators. And it is very difficult to talk with them. Communication with the Estonian and Czech Republic spectators is very difficult for us and we hope that our spectators can help us with the talking with the people, because they are on the stages to see the beautiful rally and the speed of the rally cars. And they cannot do it if the stage is canceled.
“I am very sad because for the last year we prepared the rally. For the last six months we have been talking to the fans, trying to educate them through the social media, the television, through the Polish Championship. This is the effort of a lot of people working.”
