Against a backdrop of massive changes to the immediate future of the World Rally Championship, all rally fans seemed to talk about after Safari Rally Kenya was the points system. Again.
The new-for-2024 system that has drivers bank points for their performance up to Saturday, followed by a separate set of points for Sunday, has been highly controversial. It was a talking point once again when Thierry Neuville only scored one point fewer than rally winner Kalle Rovanperä despite finishing fifth, 10 minutes off the pace.
Three rounds into the WRC’s points experiment, DirtFish decided it was time for an initial evaluation. Is it working? Does it fail to reward winners? Should it be scrapped? Suffice to say opinions in our writer’s room are split…
The jury is still out
Are we ever going to give up on this debate? No. It’s the story that just keeps on giving. Monte was fairly innocuous. Sweden was a bit contentious and Safari was, depending on who you ask, monstrously contentious.
Elfyn Evans outscored Rally Sweden winner Esapekka Lappi
Is it a disgrace that Thierry Neuville can drop 10 minutes and end up with just one point fewer than the overall winner? Is it a disgrace that Hyundai retired two cars and dropped just four points to Toyota?
No. And no.
The rules are written in black and white. You go fast, you brake less, you roll the dice and take your chances and you can take 30 points away from a WRC round. Everybody can.
That Kalle Rovanperä backed off through Sunday is as sensible as it is understandable. As understandable as it was that the Hyundai drivers took aim and sent their i20s down the roads as fast as they would go.
It’s beyond question or doubt that the new points system livened up what would have been a shockingly dull Sunday. But you can also understand Toyota’s frustrations at having produced a racy and reliable car to finish one-two, only to be partially overshadowed by Hyundai’s all-out attack through Sunday, when two of the three GR Yaris drivers were on part-throttle.
Did Safari strengthen or weaken the case for the new points system?
Personally, I don’t think it did either. I think it further entrenched views. Elfyn Evans probably hates the points system even more now, while Neuville can see even more value in it.
I think we’re still papering over the cracks in the championship, but Sunday was entertaining and entertainment brings eyeballs and eyeballs pay the bills and potentially persuades manufacturers to come to our backyard.
That was the long answer. The short answer is… no.
David Evans
Simplicity sells
Keep it simple. That’s my view.
Just look at WRC2. While those at the top of the World Rally Championship tree fought over points scored in three different ways – none of which were based on the final leaderboard – its support class awarded 25 points to Safari winner Gus Greensmith. In second, Oliver Solberg got 18. Kajetan Kajetanowicz finished third and took home 15.
Just as the WRC got all convoluted with its scoring system for 2024, WRC2 did away with powerstage points.
Gus Greensmith scored 25 points for winning WRC2 on the Safari
There’s no need. What was the point of them? The WRC2 competition is hard enough fought without the requirement for bonuses that skew sporting merit. To my mind, one glance at a rally result should be all you need to know exactly how many points every competitor scored.
On the one hand, rallying is desperate to expand its audience, increase the return on investment for its stakeholders and attract more manufacturers. On the other, the WRC is meddling with points systems and making the unfolding situation on a rally almost impossible to follow. To what end? There are other ways of maintaining interest throughout the entire event.
I have no doubt that the scoring system will be further tweaked next year to address some of the criticism it has been bombarded with. But why? Here’s an idea: rather than regular fiddling to fix something that wasn’t broken, pare it back. Twenty-five points for a win; 18 for second. Then we all know where we stand.
Keep it simple.
Mark Paulson
Another solution is needed
If the question you’re asking is whether the points system works, then you’re asking the wrong question.
The points system works as intended. It is functioning as it was designed to. Safari laid that out clear as day: Hyundai, having suffered a woeful first few days in Kenya, went on full attack and cleared house. Two of Toyota’s drivers put in a traditional Sunday drive and the third simply couldn’t keep pace with the two blue-and-orange cars.
Ott Tänak's Safari Sunday attack earned 11 points
The correct question to ask is: what competitive values should rallying stand for? Once there is agreement on the answer, then a points system can be designed to implement that vision.
Let’s go with the traditionalists for a minute: if your car breaks down or you crash, you are out, period. No return to the stages for you, not even under super rally.
Using Safari as an example, by Saturday we’d have been down to the three Toyotas, Adrien Fourmaux’s M-Sport Puma and Thierry Neuville flogging a limping i20 N Rally1. Sunday would have been so utterly boring, there would have been no point following it whatsoever. Just finish the rally on Saturday afternoon and go home – it would save us all time and money.
When this new points system was developed, there was one clear objective: stop the casual Sunday driving. It achieved this. But it did this without much care for the knock-on effects – a familiar theme from the directives issued by the World Motor Sport Council in February defining the WRC’s short-term future.
One suggestion has been to ditch the powerstage to achieve a better balance between Sundays and the rest of the rally. From a mathematical point of view it’s a solid idea. But we must remember why the powerstage is now fixed as the final stage on Sunday: it’s part of the selling point for television.
Yes, linear broadcast is old-school and the nature of content consumption is changing to be digital-first – but the National Football League in the United States, for example, rakes in over $10 billion per year from rights deals. TV deals remain a core pillar of revenue generation for sports championships; there’s economic viability to consider when making decisions that affect a product designed for TV.
So, what’s the fix? I’m sticking to my guns with the Endurance/Sprint split – the idea that there is no Saturday night cut-off point followed by Super Sunday, but rather there is an Endurance scored by time, with a heavier points weighting, and a Sprint element scored concurrently for being fast on individual stages but paid out at the end of the rally.
That fixes Sunday cruising – win all the Sunday stages and you have a chance of scooping bonus points, though potentially not quite as many as the current system. And it stops the onus on Sunday being everything; retire on Friday and fly on Saturday and you would be picking up big Sprint points.
What can’t be allowed to happen is simply pressing the ‘undo’ button. Going back to the past will fix nothing. Sundays, the powerstage aside, will be a waste of time again. WRC’s stakeholders tried something radical with this new points system and it has had both positive and negative consequences.
The goal should be to refine, adapt and push forward, not give up and accept that Sundays should be boring for the sake of treating rallying’s DNA as if it’s untouchable.
Alasdair Lindsay
It's Croatia next... who'll be doing what on the roads around Zagreb?
Keeping the championship fight alive
It was cool to see Neuville come out of Kenya with 19 points after all of his issues. From my perspective, it seems there’s a lot more strategy at play throughout the event, both with vehicle sympathy and driving style. With more points on offer and spread more across the event, hopefully we can end up with a nice championship battle going right to the finish of the season.
It’s great for the drivers, and huge for the sport to end the season with a title battle story. One thing which is undeniable about the new points system is that it’s given us plenty to talk about – and that’s got to be a good thing. What’s worse than being talked about? Exactly, not being talked about.
I’m happy to defend the system in the hope we do see more exciting competition and a season-long championship battle – and I currently have hope for that. But if we don’t, then I’ll join Colin [Clark] in saying it’s bonkers!
Brenten Kelly
