This bunch of people didn’t get the memo. Thousands of them, all missed the mail. It was probably because they’d been sleeping in a tent. Or their car. Or under the stars. For four nights straight.
They hadn’t heard what poor shape the World Rally Championship is in. Or how 2027 regulatory turmoil is going to deliver further negativity to the series. Or how the WRC Promoter’s forgotten how to promote.
They missed that one-pager. In Fafe on Sunday, focus was elsewhere. Mainly on the sight of head-height ballistic rally cars and putting more fuel in the chainless chainsaw at what will be one of the season’s biggest WRC parties.
Not a naysayer among them. Literally, hundreds of thousands of fans turned out in Portugal for the fifth round of the championship. Every one of them went home to tell their friends about rallying’s rude health.
We’re realists here at DirtFish. We fully understand the WRC has its challenges right now. Yes, there are questions being asked of the next round of WRC regulations and yes, it’s common knowledge the WRC Promoter is up for sale. Stepping outside of the fervour and the emotion, let’s use the second of those two points as something of a barometer of commercial interest.
There are people out there calling for more investment, for change in the promotion of the championship, but where’s the incentive to invest when you have people sitting around a table talking how much they want to pay for your company right now.
Last month, Las Palmas was all about an apparent up-coming announcement that JP Morgan would be confirming the sale of Red Bull and German firm KW 25’s interests in promoting the world championship. You might have noticed, that announcement didn’t arrive. It didn’t arrive because there’s more interest in the deal.
Naturally, there are those keen to further a doom-mongering agenda with news that nobody wants to shell out on the WRC Promoter. Sorry to disappoint you, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
As one high-ranking series official told me at the weekend: “The number of interested parties looking at the deal is incredibly positive. It’s a continued demonstration of the understanding of the potential which sits in the World Rally Championship.
“The promoter’s in something of an invidious position right now. There are people out there calling for more investment, for change in the promotion of the championship, but where’s the incentive to invest when you have people sitting around a table talking how much they want to pay for your company right now.”
It’s naïve to think the promoter would or should be delivering radical change right now. If you were selling your house and you were confident of having buyers on the hook, you wouldn’t start building an extension or redecorate downstairs.
It appeared a sale would go through post-Canarias. It didn't. But that's not overly concerning – there's still multiple directions the sale process could go in
Bashing the promoter has become something of a fashionable pastime in rallying. It’s worth remembering, where we were when the current team took over a little over a decade ago.
Vladimir Antonov mean anything to you? He was chap heading up Convers Sports Initiatives, the company which took over as WRC rights-holder from International Sportsworld Communicators, latterly known as North One Sports.
What happened next Mr Antonov? Mr Antonov? Ah, he can’t come to the phone right now. He’s in Russia, somewhere. If you see him, please remind him there’s a Vilnius regional court judge by the name of Gintaras Dzedulionis who would like to invite him into custody for 10 and a half years.
Antonov’s financial shenanigans left the WRC on the floor. The FIA stepped in to appoint Eurosport as an interim promoter, then came the current alliance in 2013. Undoubtedly, it took a while to go through the gears, but the game changed with All Live in 2018: every step and every stage of the World Rally Championship was now available from multiple camera angles and, as it said on the tin, all live.
Since then, the promoter has returned world rallying to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, with the promise of America very much on the horizon for next season.
It may not be the same event as its pre-millenium forerunner – but the return of Safari Rally Kenya was a welcomed step in the WRC's rebuild process
Financially, the future of the sport is a world away from where it was a decade ago.
Personally, I would argue the promoter has focused on the hardcore to the potential detriment of showing the peripheral person why this sport is more pertinent to their day-to-day life than any other form of motorsport. The data center is a possible example of that. I love it. I love the potential for digging deeper and understanding more of what’s causing the water temperature to rise on this car or that.
But does this genuinely help broaden the understanding of our sport’s greatness? For me, no.
And that brings me back to Portugal. Formula 1 is regularly held up as the shiniest of as motorsport’s shiny crown jewels. Biggest ever attendance at a Formula 1 race is reckoned to be the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide 30 years ago.
The numbers are still being counted, but last weekend topped that. Last time we were in Argentina, that number would likely have been doubled. As well it might with a South American Chile-Paraguay double-header later this year.
The 'world' is truly back in the World Rally Chamionship. Long may it continue
I know, I know, that’s not comparing apples with apples with restricted access to circuits and all the other limitations that go along with it, but still… half a million folk loving the World Rally Championship from the side of the road’s not a bad indicator, is it?
We know we don’t have enough cars, but look at the spectacle from the ones we do have. And when we say we don’t have enough cars, are we forgetting the record-busting WRC2 entry last week?
Worth thinking about, isn’t it.
