Shake Up In The World Rally Championship

It may not be pure competition, but mighty Volkswagen have been beaten three times in a row and for four straight rallies, Sebastien Ogier has not stood on the top of a WRC podium.

If WRC event promoters wanted a break from constantly seeing Sebastien Ogier and Volkswagen Motorsport win rallies, they can thank for the sport’s rule-makers for angering ‘purist’ rally fans by enforcing a rule that makes the championship leader start a rally stage before the other competitors.

The three-time defending champion was extremely vocal about the rule costing him a win in Mexico but has since gotten down to climbing as high as possible rather than sound like a broken record. Two second places and two third places mean that Ogier is still a massive 64 points ahead of Hyundai’s Dani Sordo, who has yet to cash in on the apparent lottery being run in the WRC at the moment.

In fact, the Spanish veteran is yet to even finish on the podium! Four straight fourth place finishes, preceded by two sixth places means that despite not being the four other drivers besides Ogier to record a win so far. As a matter of fact, you need to go down to fifth place in the points table to find the next driver after Ogier to have registered a win so far.

In Rally Portugal and Rally Italia Sardegna it was the turn of Citroen’s Kris Meeke and Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, respectively, to cash in their fortunes at ‘Casino WRC’. Meeke’s win came despite Citroen running an extremely truncated campaign for 2016 in order to prepare their 2017-spec machine ready to take on the challenge from Volkswagen and Toyota. After winning in Portugal, Meeke was not present in Italy in order to further push the limits on the French company’s wild new rally car.

It left the door open for Neuville, who ended a bad run for the Korean manufacturer since Haydon Paddon won in Argentina. The rising Kiwi star recorded his second straight retirement while Neuville was classified only 29th in Portugal. In Sardegna though, the young Belgian was able to end his winless run that went back to the 2014 edition of Rally Deutschland.

With the FIA ruling on deciding who gets to drive the 2017 machines, one has to wonder what other rule changes would have to be enforced in order to ensure something close to a level playing field. While it is naïve to expect purism in top level motorsport, very obviously blatant methods like the World Touring Car Championship’s success ballast and the WRC’s forced sweeping duties do cheapen the results to a fair degree.

One can say it is fun to see someone penalized for being the best prepared trying to rise up the overall classification, but isn’t it just a bit too manufactured fun? Where does sport end and pure showbiz start? Perhaps an even bigger rule change than the one for 2017 is due for there to be truly level playing field.