Plans to revise the format of World Rally Championship events in the second half of the season have not found favor with the events in question.
FIA rally director Yves Matton told DirtFish he is investigating all possible ways to include as many of the WRC rounds postponed due to coronavirus.
Shortening the current rally week, which generally runs from Monday-Sunday to include regulatory documentation, the recce and the competition itself will be key if there’s to be any hope of slotting in postponed events such as Rally Italy.
Matton has already admitted including all events will be complicated, with the longhaul rallies – such as Rally Argentina – thought to be the first to fall.
One possibility under discussion for the second half of the year is to run two- instead of three-day events.
Such a move has most of the European rounds up in arms. Events like Finland, Germany and Britain all rely heavily on spectator ticket sales to keep their rallies afloat, and the postponed Rally Italy is the same.
Finland has run a two-and-a-half day event in the past, but clerk of the course Kai Tarkiainen said a Saturday-Sunday format would be a tough sell in Jyväskyklä.
“When we started on Thursday afternoon and ran two really full days on Friday and Saturday, that worked very well for us,” he told DirtFish.
“But the feeling from us for a Saturday-Sunday rally would be in line with what everybody else is saying – it would be very, very difficult to get the [necessary] revenue when you’re not really cutting down on the costs of running the event that much.
“We could shorten the rally week by running the recce longer on Wednesday. Currently regulations state we have to relinquish the drivers at 5pm for their promotional activities.
“If we could start the recce at seven in the morning and run through until seven or eight in the evening, we could make that work – the light is certainly good enough in Finland in the summer.”
