ERC 2015 season

[itix]

A bit late really as we've already had 3 of the 10 events this season, but the next one out in June is in my opinion the most spectacular one; the Rally Azores with the beautiful helicopter pictures as they race up the ridges of the volcanic island on very narrow roads!

I guess a congratulations to Craig Breen is in place after his first ever victory to what could almost be counted as his home event despite the ever troublesome Peugeot 208 T16 having turbo issues.

Here is a short onboard clip from one of the stages, and I am sorry F1 people but this is so much more impressive in my eyes than what those in F1 are achieving:


Also if Matt is around I'm curious about his opinion about the R5 cars and if he shares Malcolm W's opinion that they should be the base of future WRC cars!

[MadMatt]

To be honest I am not really following the ERC, but there are always great fights and nice rallies.

I can comment on the R5 thing tho. I think they are very good. When you look at how far these cars are restricted (heck, they can only use 1, yes ONE different upright for the whole car), the performance is immense, and at a fraction of the cost of a WRC car. Plus they look similar for the general public that is not really into rallying.

However, I disagree with what Malcolm said. He clearly spoke with his wallet here, as we know M-Sport is not in a good financial shape, most of their revenues are coming from R5s, so for sure it is a good business, but I wouldn't want to see this becoming the top of rallying.

We still need cutting-edge technology and cars, and despite WRC machines being more and more limited, they still represent the pinnacle of rallying, so for me R5 should not replace WRC but keep being an "affordable" formula for youngsters and gentlemen drivers!

[itix]

AFAIK, the R5's are 0.5 - 1s per km slower.

This is all theoretically in my head, but shouldn't you be able to make up for that by allowing bigger brakes, bigger restrictor and higher allowed boost pressure? A theoretical R6 car of sorts. I mean, the cars will of course go up a bit in price if the WRC teams start playing around with them and budgets will be spent somewhere for sure... but damn, € 400 000 vs € 170 000 is a HUGE difference. If the base price would be kept around there there would be a huge increase in privateers entering the sport at the top level for sure. You could have many more teams like Prokop's with a budget for a full season's commitment which would spice things up.

I think that would be interesting! I can see the technical viewpoint but let's be honest, most people that follow the sport would not even be able to tell us the engine volume of the cars.