New 2017 WRC Cars Are Too Quick, According To The FIA
It’s fair to say the new 2017 World Rally Championship cars look epic, sound downright insane and are much quicker than last year’s machinery.
But, according to the FIA, the cars are now too fast. This comes after stage 12 of Rally Sweden was called off due to safety recommendations over the speeds of the cars.
No, we’re not joking. The first run through the Kron stage saw Ott Tanak set an average speed of 85.62mph, but the FIA doesn’t want that figure to go over 80mph.
So, according to the FIA’s rally director Jarmo Mahonen, it’s considering rule changes to bring down the average speeds of rally stages.
Here’s what he told Autosport:
“These cars are quicker than the old cars - but in this stage even last year’s [cars] were going more than 130km/h [80mph]. These kind of stages teach us one thing: we need to take a more firm grip when organisers want to introduce new stages, we have to be present to check them.
“If we see a stage time of more than 130km/h then it’s an indicator that we need to be looking at this. From our point of view this was too fast. What we want to do is look at a guideline on this, but maybe we need to think to the regulations.”
But, of course, no one wants to see the average speeds decreasing through artificial means or the cars being pegged back.
Thankfully, Mahonen seems to understand this:
“We want the cancellation of this stage to send a message to the other organisers to think carefully about their route. We want speeds lower than 130km/h, but I remember when I was an organiser and I didn’t want to use straw bales to make chicanes. I understand that, and the answer is simple: use smaller roads that will be slower. This is what we have to do.”
Let’s hope that, if something is brought in, it doesn’t impact the incredible spectacle of the new WRC cars.
Comments
Go FIAgure these WRCowards are holding back drivers as always.
And this is why WRC will never be at the level of Group B
Group B was WRC
Don’t tell me that the people of the FIA are replaced by “Sucessors”
Health and safety always ruins things for the world of Motorsport…
Cars are safier and we are able now to know were to place spectator for them to stay safe. FIA is trying to ruin wrc just for people to ficus on f1. I like f1 more than wrc but the fia is just stupid right now. Now that motorsport are sqfe enough, they should let constructors try to find more speed and efficiency. Futhermore, the more close to road going cars in motorsport are rallycars. They should definitly don’t change anything rn or they’ll ruin everything
Really FIA ? Too fast ? You are the one who make the rules
Can’t you see it was all planned? FIA could not complain cars were too fast, so they made cars faster (warning: this contains high doses of irony)
A lot of butthurt over this, and here’s why the FIA is right to do this:
Remember how Group B eventually got closed down? Spectators died because the cars were getting too fast. And it brought down the whole of Group B and the cars because of it. And if you remember, the drivers where very close to their limits because of the speed too, so it was easier to make mistakes.
I understand that safety in cars has come a long way and that crowds aren’t as loose as they used to be, but at the same time we live in very different times. It wouldn’t take much to bring down a sport that would be deemed dangerous in this age of political correctness. And I think it’s the right thing to do, no matter how much we love a sport it should never ever put the life of anyone in danger. So the FIA aren’t doing this to be buzzkills, they’re doing this to make sure it doesn’t get too fast to be safe, they’re doing this to protect the sport. And I don’t think we should be bashing them because of it.
85mph vs 110mph and 30 years of safety improvements look at how much airplanes have changed in 30 years we should be matching and exceeding group b speeds
This is true. And another thing was that courses were quite a lot longer than now,(I think) so Drivers would probably get tired, and their concentration would drop off.
it’s not that cars are fast, but the Estonian driver is too good 😁
If they can keep average speeds down by designing intense, tight routes, fine, but please FIA don’t stuff this up. Rally is finally worth watching again, especially now that its free to follow on Red Bull TV. Oh and while we are at it, F1, that other sport you ruined, lets go ahead at lower that minimum weight to something below the 700 kg. And stay away from drifting and rally cross.
About F1: they can’t. The 2017 cars are much bigger, and the hybrid tech makes them too heavy.
I’m glad to say I’m estonian like Ott Tänak