The FIA has clarified the use and implementation of virtual chicanes after leading World Rally Championship drivers raised concerns about the system after the shakedown of Rally Latvia.
Ahead of their full use at next month’s Rally Finland, drivers were permitted to try a virtual chicane on the 2.2-mile shakedown stage for round eight of this year’s World Rally Championship.
Doing so was not compulsory, but several drivers opted to try them and weren’t universally happy with how they are currently implemented.
What is a virtual chicane?
Designed as an alternative to a traditional baled chicane, the virtual chicane has been used on events all across the world, including in the US, but was first trialed at an international FIA event on last year’s Rally di Roma.
Virtual chicanes were trialed, successfully, at last year's ERC Rally di Roma
The idea is to slow the cars down just like a regular chicane, but avoiding the need for any physical objects helps reduce costs for organizers and potentially for competitors too with the probability of damage reduced.
In Latvia, the VC was placed 600m from the start of the shakedown stage just after a jump.
How do they work?
Marked in the roadbook, a virtual chicane is effectively a designated slow zone where the competitor must slow and hit the required target speed. Typically, the target speed is 60kph [37mph].
They can vary in length but are usually a few hundred meters long. In Latvia for example, the virtual chicane was a 200m stretch of road.
To successfully complete the chicane, the driver must reach the minimum speed within the designated zone before accelerating away again at full competition pace.
When drivers reach the virtual chicane section, the RallySafe timing system – which manages tracking and delivers notifications to crews such as red flags being deployed on a live stage – provides the target speed drivers must reach. Once the system has registered crew has decelerated to the required speed within the designated virtual chicane zone, it will then confirm crews may accelerate to racing speed again. Drivers do not need to stay at this lowered speed through the entire zone, merely decelerate to the required speed at some point within the zone, which is marked with boards at the roadside.
What the drivers thought
Although reigning world champion Kalle Rovanperä elected not to practice the virtual chicane, he was in the minority as the rest of his rivals all did. M-Sport drivers Adrien Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster didn’t do a single pass of shakedown without slowing down for it.
The key concern from the drivers was safety, specifically the need to look down at the Rally Safe screen within their cars rather than a notification flashing up closer to their eye-line on the dashboard to alert them of the approaching VC.
“Let’s say the system how FIA plans it at the moment is not really working, so obviously I guess it needs to be organized a bit differently at the moment,” Ott Tänak told DirtFish.
“It’s the way that we should take eyes off the road and watch some screens, so obviously it can’t work like this.
“It’s a bit of a safety case if you need to look at some screen in the car and not on the road, so I guess on that high speed it’s not really the most clever thing to do,” he added.
Ogier feels the virtual chicane system isn't quite perfect yet
Eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier agreed, also highlighting concerns over the consistency of messaging to each competing car.
“We have to be sure that it works perfectly, that’s the main concern, I would say,” Ogier told DirtFish.
“If the signal is consistent and everybody doesn’t lose extra time because your tracker was just lost for a second, that’s the issue. But otherwise, we just have to get used to it, probably.
“Some improvements are still possible, of course. At the moment, we are not getting any information on the dash from the drivers, which is a bit of nonsense, because then you have to look inside the cockpit and not on the road. So that’s, obviously, thinking safety, not ideal.
“But, yeah, let’s see. I’ve heard that it has already been tested in other places, and I’m sure it will work. If it’s already working perfectly, probably not.”
Ogier’s Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans added: “It’s a bit of a safety case if you need to look at some screen in the car and not on the road.
“So I guess on that high speed, it’s not really the most clever thing to do.”
Fourmaux can see the value in virtual chicanes but feels their utilization could be better optimized.
“It’s interesting because you need to race under 60kph, or then you get a two-second penalty per [every] kilometer per hour you are over,” he explained. “So it starts to be quite a lot.
M-Sport man Munster was perhaps the most positive about virtual chicanes
“So imagine on the first one I was 69, so [that would be a penalty of] 18 seconds. So it’s quite a lot. So you really need to be sure you are below 60.
“It was interesting to try [but] I think we need to think a little bit to optimize it. But then I think it was good to try, so at least we can be better for the future.”
Others were slightly more positive though. Munster tried the VC four times and felt it “went quite well”.
He said: “It’s a bit strange in the beginning but maybe also it’s not a bad thing because first of all you don’t risk to crash into bales, and second I think it makes maybe the road a bit less destroyed for the organizers afterwards.
“We just need to get used to it, but it’s not a bad thing.”
The FIA’s response
Nicolas Klinger talked DirtFish through the use of virtual chicanes
DirtFish spoke to FIA rally safety delegate Nicolas Klinger, who said he can “understand” the drivers’ concerns but pointed out where he felt their arguments were flawed.
“We are using the system, the tracking system, the SAS we are using in WRC. If they can’t see the screen, that means they can’t also not see the red flag, which is mandatory to be seen in the car,” Klinger said.
“So that there is an installation problem in their car. Normally the screen has to be visible from driver and co-driver in case of a big issue, but that’s [been the case] for years. I understand what they mean.
“In Finland, as it is the first time it will be officially implemented in a stage, we will have specific arches with 200m pre-arches, 100m pre-arches, a big gate entrance, virtual chicane entrance, and they have 200m to slow down, and a virtual chicane exit. So, you know, it’s quite visible,” he added.
“They know where to slow down. And after, to be honest, I think when you have the fourth gear on the car, or even the third gear, you know that you are not at 50kph. So it’s not at the start of your braking that you need to look at the screen.
We need to be very sure about where we implement it. We need to be sure about the signal and everything, and the drivers need to get used to itNicolas Klinger
“You need to slow down, and for sure, every driver, they need… I think it’s just they need to get the feeling about what is going down to 60, 70 kph. And it’s for sure, when you reach down from 100 or from 70 to 60, 50, at this moment, you have to look at the screen.
“But then, you have also someone sitting beside, who has nothing to do. It’s a straight line, and they are in a slow down, so he can look at the screen and keep his eyes on the screen.”
That tactic – the co-driver being responsible for tracking virtual chicane compliance – is the approach Rovanperä indicated he will be taking, with Jonne Halttunen entrusted with telling him what to do: “In our car, the co-driver needs to tell me [what’s on] the screen,” the reigning world champion pointed out.
Klinger also explained why virtual chicanes are a useful tool for events to utilize.
“We have to use the technology now [as] we have the technology,” he said. “It was tested last year in Roma in ERC, 130 cars, two virtual chicanes and no any issues. So I think it works.
“We need to be very sure about where we implement it. We need to be sure about the signal and everything, and the drivers need to get used to it.
Virtual chicanes offer the possibility for longer stages, particularly on Tarmac
“For sure, on the sport side, it’s also where you are not able to use straw bales or something which is strong enough. We don’t want to use concrete because we don’t want to destroy cars. Straw bales, it’s heavy, it’s also destroying cars. I don’t want to pay all the bumpers and the mirrors they are hitting on chicanes, but we have to put chicanes at some places for safety.
“And the light splitters, I mean the red and white [barrier] thing, are so light that they move away just with the speed of the car and the wind that it generates so the idea is to use that and for sure in the future now we have the technology to allow it.
“Before we didn’t have the technology. Maybe yes in the future we will have a repeater or something on the dashboard because it will be adapted to the use, because the box at the moment is for another use. But there are many places now where roads are wider, faster, and cars are faster. And we can’t have at least straw bales, or we have no space to put straw bales to have a proper chicane.
“If we go further, on asphalt stages where we are not in forests but we are on roads, there are houses, schools, and places where we can’t have more than eight kilometers of stages because in the middle you have 200 meters of an area where someone doesn’t want anything.
“So this is also the reason maybe in the future that we can have 20km stages instead of eight kilometers.”
