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Sup guys, how do you comprehend and understand the skill involve in rally. Is it harder to control than in F1? Do you find it a bit dull lately, I'm okay with Sebastien Loeb taking 9 consecutive wdc titles but the cars are not beautiful anymore. I think I prefer the cars in the 90s and early 00s because they looked so awesome. I wonder what happened to Subaru and Mitsubishi if I wasn't mistaken they were once the best cars in rally in the 90s so what happened to them?

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Latest F1 vid I made http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C4qJXyRLDg&feature=youtu.be

Money talks really.

Manufacturers aren't seeing the benefit of WRC at the moment while Citroen dominating the sport completely.

Toyota, Peugeot, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Skoda, Séat, Suzuki are all gone from the sport.

Hyundai are returning for 2013 and have an entry.

I think what made rallying so good was the wide range of competition we had, the unpredictability, and how dramatic the cars used to ride. They still look great, but the sport has lost its way.

I used to love WRC when i was a kid. Now its just all sort of "dried up"

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RSR Racing

Loeb & Citroen winning everything probably dried the sport up a lot, Personally i didnt have a problem with it because i love Loeb & i thought it was special that i was watching the best driver ever taking on the stages and it was still awesome to see everyone doing the stages as well. When Loeb leaves interest will be restored.

WRC started it's slipper slope in the early 2000's, and it's never recovered, consistently taking steps back and now it's a sad state of a sport, which is a great shame.




This, the competition between the manufacturers/teams and strength of the drivers is what made rallying so special in the 90's and earlier (Was quite good in early 2000's but that's when it started to die out) Loeb took advantage of the weak competition and a dying sport, sure he was talented but his easy titles where due to the very poor state of WRC competition and it's downward slope. Loeb and Citroen just took advantage of the problems WRC faced, which it never recovered from.




Please read above, the domination of Loeb and his team did not kill WRC, it was due to the competition in general leaving and being so weak (economy and other major factors also) Loeb leaving won't be a magic fix as WRC has many problems to fix and may never return to it's best days.

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RSR Racing

So you think Loeb is only able to dominate because the other drivers are weak? Sure things might not recover to what they used to be but it will rejuvenate interest because Citroen wont be wining everything which might encourage a resurgence in manufacturers

He just took advantage of the competition being very weak "overall" which includes the drivers / manufacturers and teams. If you stuck Loeb in the 90's etc it would of been allot different and it was not had been as easy because of the massive advantage him & Citroen had over the competition in recent years.

Back in the best days drivers pushed each other to the limits with the strength of the competition between the drivers and cars being so close, it was one of the highlights of rallying which has not been there for over 9 years now. It quite drastically got allot weaker in overall competition as the talent got weaker, manufacturers dropped out or could not keep up with the speed of the Citroen. Don't get me wrong Loeb was talented, but he clearly took advantage of WRC when it was at a very weak point.

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RSR Racing

I reckon Loeb would've established himself as the best in any scenario. 9-consecutive World Titles? Maybe not, but he'd have won enough.

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I also have one of these.

Mitsi cocked up by not going to WRC rules with the rest of them and insisting on staying GrpA by the time they did change they were too far behind the development race. Result uncompetitive Mitsi pulled funding.

Subaru insisted staying with the Impreza plus I believe reduced to funding given to Prodrive. Result uncompetitive pulled the plug.

PSA didn't want two of their brands fighting over the spoils. Did a winner takes all deal. Result Pug pulled.

Ford have constantly reduced funding to M-sport. Result no championships.

toyota pulled out to go toF1

Then the Likes of Hyundai didn't pay their bills to the guys running the team.

Overall result, lack of teams that can afford to pay top line drivers and lack of competition.

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Disclaimer: The above post maybe tongue in cheek.

"I thought I'd get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual."

Loeb would have been multiple champion & the best of the drivers regardless of era, he's the best driver there has ever been

You are seriously underestimating the likes of Makkinen, Grohnholm, Juha and even McCrae and Burnsie.

Thats before you get into the likes of the Stig, Vatenen, Rohrl

Oh and of course Henri.

He's good however he would have never have anywhere the same number of WDCs if he was a member of the previous generation.

Tommi Mak was just pure class.

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Disclaimer: The above post maybe tongue in cheek.

"I thought I'd get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual."

Sainz was good on his day as well, there's so many, Loeb would of maybe challanged for wins but he certainly would of found it very tough to get titles, even to get one in that kind of field which he never even remotely had to face at all.



Not much knowledge in rallying then, Johnston brings up good points, you cant just look at the results, he had a massive advantage with the car against very weak competition in the years of rallying when it was at it's weakest ever points.

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RSR Racing

Yeah he without a doubt wouldn't have won 9 consecutive championships, but he'd have been up there with them definitely and would have won championships. I'm not denying that nowadays rally is lower quality than it used to be but Loeb would still have been class.

It's a similar argument to Schumacher/Vettel in F1, the competition was too weak and the car too dominant. While I agree Loeb would have not won 9 WRC titles, he started his dominance in an era where there was still some great rally drivers. He would have probably won some titles, maybe even been a record holder still, but not as dominant as he was.

Now VW are in for next year, hopefully this will be the start of manufacturers returning rather than it effectively becoming a spec series. I do still hope with Loeb's limited schedule next year he secure's title #10 to prove a point.

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"We can not drive slower, just to make the races more exciting." Alain Prost

Now Lancia, Subaru and Mitsubishi aren't in the sport it's not the same. It's Like F1 without McLaren, Ferrari and Williams

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"I aim to misbehave"

So Kamui has a contract for Ferrari in WEC? Kinda makes this bit a tad pointless..

No competition and only two real factory teams really going for it.

Big rally fan, but even i have not been able to watch the sport for past couple of years. Nothing there to watch.

Personally, while I fully appreciate how much skill rallying takes, it's never really captured my imagination, firstly because the majority of the races are on dirt tracks, and driving on dirt doesn't have much real-world application anymore... and secondly because only the special stages count, which I fully understand is for safety reasons and couldn't actually be any other way, but it takes something away from it for me.

But what's happened to rallying is basically what happened to sports car/endurance racing, when one marque completely dominates it becomes a snorefest. There have to be at least two competitors for it to be interesting for neutrals.

WRC lost its way well before Citroen entered, and as good as Loeb is he has clearly benefitted from the reduced amount of manufacturers; his main competition has come from Ford and the occasional challenge from a team mate. Rallying lost its way when it tried to bend over backwards to suit the demands of the TV producers, and taking the sport away from the spectators, restricting the overall mileage, picking rallies with central loops, even if it meant taking the event away from classic stages traditionally packed with spectators and pounding the same stage twice sometimes three times each event. The days of the RAC rally attracting one million spectators into the forests at all times of the day and night in November are gone forever, and in my opinion rallying as a world championship event will be gone within ten years, national championships and classic events such as the safari rally will rely on competition fees from drivers and entrance fees from spectators.

I got into rallying in the early 2000s and I was more fond of the WRC than F1 at the time. The pool of talent was incredible there was McRae,Makinen,Sainz,Burns,Kankkunen,Solberg,Gronholm all at the same time, then you had a young Sebastian Loeb as well as asphault expert Gilles Panizzi and Markko Martin who was highly underrated for me and unfortunately never recovered from the death of his co-pilot. When Loeb finally emerged most of this talent vanished and the manufacturers vanished along with it. I started losing interest when the championship became Citroen vs Ford and Loeb vs Hirvonen but I really hope rallying pulls itself together.

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Favorite Current Drivers :Kimi Raikkonen,Susie Wolff,Nico Rosberg,Lewis Hamilton,Danica Patrick,Carmen Jorda,Katherine Legge

Past Drivers : Ayrton Senna,James Hunt,Eddie Irvine,Jacques Villeneuve,Martin Brundle

+1 to that Markko in a good car could have upset the apple cart.

It's a shame too Panizzi could never get the hang of gravel. On tar the guy was just sublime. Better than Loeb who was considered a "Tarmac specialist" when he started WRC.

People forget one of the reasons Citreon took on Sainz and Colin was to help young Loebs Gravel driving.

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Disclaimer: The above post maybe tongue in cheek.

"I thought I'd get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual."