The statistics tell the story. Ten stages, 91 competitive miles, 16 hours and just two remote service zones.
Friday’s leg of Rally Portugal has always been bruising, but there’s a feeling within the service park that this year’s is a touch too extreme.
The key differences are clear: the addition of a remote service zone (instead of a tire fitting zone as in previous years) which is then repeated, and an extra loop comprising two brand-new stages.
And with Saturday’s leg beginning for the first competitor at 6am (parc fermé out) and ending at around 10pm the night before, there’s hardly any time to recover for Saturday.
“The schedule is definitely on the extreme side,” world championship leader Elfyn Evans told DirtFish. “The length of the days is fine, but the short nights as well coupled with that is difficult by the time you get to Sunday.”
Saturday’s leg is similarly long, but features 15 fewer miles and one less hour (plus a main service back in Matosinhos).
I'm not so sure fans are following rally at seven o'clock in the morning anyway.Sébastien Ogier
The concern among drivers is they’ll have limited time to take any rest or even eat during the regroups, which on Friday are only 15 minutes each.
Kalle Rovanperä explained: “I would say the timetable looks to be a bit too much this year. We have a lot of kilometers, which is fine, but then we have super long days, which is not so fine.
“Like Friday we only have a few regroups, some remote service where we need to be doing something ourselves. So there will be like 10 minute breaks to eat and rest.
“I think for a day when we are like 13 hours in the car or something, it’s a bit too little. But yeah, that’s going to be the challenge this weekend.”
Record Rally Portugal winner Sébastien Ogier questioned if the days needed to be so long, wondering if fans are really up so early to watch the WRC on TV.
“It’s very extreme,” Ogier said. “The range is probably a bit too big, because I’m not so sure fans are following rally at seven o’clock in the morning anyway. Probably also not having any service [is a factor]; we’re discovering the tires and it’s difficult to be right with the setup, so you’re kind of stuck the whole day with the same things.
The reality of being a rally driver: analysing bytes of telemetry will always be prioritised ahead of grabbing a bite
“Even now the rules have improved a bit, we have on this remote [service] a couple of possibilities. But yeah, that was the fact that we have basically 10 minutes to eat midday, which makes not so much sense.
“Like give us 10 minutes more will be not so bad. But OK, you know, it’s part of the challenge we have to face this weekend and you have to accept it.”
Fellow world champion Ott Tänak agreed with his rivals, and clearly felt frustrated that driver feedback was not being taken into account.
“It’s unfortunate that these things happen sometimes, but OK, we are in the end just the drivers and you can complain as much as you want, but you still need to drive it, so nothing else we can do,” he said.
Asked if this is the kind of issue WoRDA could help resolve, Tänak added: “This is something that has been discussed after every rally in the debrief and I think probably the interest needs to come from somewhere else.”
There is however acceptance that pushing themselves to the limit is, as Grégoire Munster put it, “part of rallying”.
M-Sport's team principal believes the biggest problem with Portugal's itinerary isn't on Friday itself – but rather the need to hold a late-night tire-fitting zone the evening before
Munster’s boss, M-Sport team principal Richard Millener, revealed the original itinerary proposed by the Portugal organizer was even more extreme, but his issue wasn’t with the length of the day but instead the inclusion of a tire fitting zone after Thursday evening’s Figueira da Foz stage.
“It’s just not required,” Millener told DirtFish. “We’ve got to do 60-70km [loop] tomorrow, and we’ll be doing that [tire fitting zone] after 1.5km because there’s complaints about potential tire wear for one stage.
“But you drive accordingly ultimately – and we had this argument last time; they still went out there and set good times and it was close and I don’t always agree with the idea it was less of a show for the spectators because if you said it’s free reign the drivers are still not going to drive untidily, you still need a fast time.
“So just for the sake of sending a lot of people down there tonight to do tire fittings and after that short amount of time… and we’ve proven it doesn’t necessarily need it, is something we still need to work on a little bit.”
Millener however feels the challenge in store on Friday is good for the WRC every now and again.
“I’m not against having a long day every now and again. It’s a really good challenge,” he said.
“There’s stories you’ve written about working hours and things like that, you know that we’re talking about that – we need to find a way to still fine-tune that and I think you can still have these incredibly big challenges with big mileage, we just have to work out how to get the stages a bit closer together and maybe not having to visit every historic stage in the past over and over.
Long days lie ahead for service crews in Matosinhos
“The average fan on the television will sometimes struggle to tell you what stage is what, so as long as we’ve got stages that are closer, get the mileage up for sure, but reduce the day load.
“Tomorrow is somewhere in the middle; a massive challenge for everybody, but I think the key is going to be getting through with no problems, which is easier said than done. Having road position for Saturday and Sunday is going to be key as well, but there’s a lot going on, you’ve seen it already with the feedback on the shakedown with the new tires for everybody. It’s a big challenge.
“Hopefully the weather will be kind to us for the first couple of days at least, probably the whole weekend, which is good because actually it levels the playing field a bit – I think it’s going to be very tight here. A couple of new stages, so yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”
Friday’s leg at Safari Rally Kenya remains the longest of the season so far in terms of competitive mileage, but was three hours shorter in terms of total time.
DirtFish has asked the organizer for comment.
