[h=2]WRC: Privateers barred for 2017[/h] Friday, 24 June 2016


RACER staff
The FIA's World Motor Sport Council meeting has confirmed no privateer drivers will be allowed to enter next generation World Rally Cars in 2017. The news from the Turin meeting means private drivers must be entered on world championship rallies by a manufacturer team.


The sport's governing body has been keen to clamp down on who drives next year's more powerful and faster World Rally Cars. The FIA's decision means an end to the private teams run by Lorenzo Bertelli and Martin Prokop, but M-Sport has a long history of entering private cars alongside its factory squad under the M-Sport World Rally Team umbrella. Private drivers will still be vetted by the FIA before they can take to the stages even under works banners.
M-Sport is the only team likely to be looking to run private cars next season. Volkswagen, Hyundai, Toyota and Citroen are expected to focus on three factory cars each.
Early last month, FIA rally director Jarmo Mahonen outlined his plans for tighter regulation of driver approval.
"We have to control these cars, but I would rather do it a softer way than the superlicense," he said. "Those cars will only be used by drivers entered by a manufacturer and approved by us. This gives us control."
Mahonen was keen to prevent an under-qualified driver "going to Malcolm [Wilson] and putting his £1 million [$1.4m] on the table to drive the 2017 car."
He added: "Today, you can put down the money and drive the car and we have no control over that. We will look at the merits of each driver who applies.
"Do we want the so-called gentleman drivers coming with these cars? No we don't. And nor do we want 18-year-old drivers coming and doing their first world championship round in one of these, either."
The WMSC has also confirmed manufacturers will no longer have to nominate a lead driver. Currently, each team has to identify one driver who will contest at least 10 of the 14 rounds. But there was no word from the FIA on plans to allow manufacturers to nominate three drivers, with the top two scoring points. There is strong speculation that rule, last used in 2003, will return next season.


POINTS LIMITED FOR SHORTENED RALLIES
The FIA has altered the allocation of points on WRC rounds running at reduced length. Starting next year, at least 75% of the stages must run to qualify for full points. Currently only half the rally needs to be completed.
Half points will be on offer from 2017 if between 50 and 75% of the route runs, while a third of the total points are taken for a rally running between 25 and 50%. Any rally running below 25% of its distance cannot offer points.

 

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WRC: Mikkelsen snatches Poland win from Tanak

Sunday, 03 July 2016 RACER staff
Andreas Mikkelsen snatched a dramatic second World Rally Championship victory by overcoming Ott Tanak on the penultimate stage of Rally Poland.
The pair had been embroiled in a lead battle, joined by Hayden Paddon, for the whole weekend. By the end of Saturday it had looked like Tanak had done enough to secure a first WRC win for himself and the DMACK tyre brand, which would have also ended an M-Sport Ford victory drought stretching back to Rally GB 2012.
Tanak began Sunday's final loop of two stages with an 18-second lead, but an impact early on the increasingly wet and rutted Baranowo stage damaged his right-front tyre and cost him 40s.
That dropped him to second behind Mikkelsen, whose previous WRC win had also come at the last moment, when Volkswagen teammate Sebastien Ogier crashed out of the lead on the final stage in Catalunya last year.
Mikkelsen and new-for-2016 co-driver Anders Jaeger came through to win by 26s as the despondent Tanak only just hung on to second – still DMACK's first podium – ahead of Hyundai's Paddon and Thierry Neuville.
Paddon fell away from the lead fight on the last day and nearly lost the final podium place to team-mate Neuville after admitting to backing off too much on the final loop where he was uncomfortable with the wet conditions and thought his 20s cushion would be enough.
Neuville got that gap down to just eight tenths of a second at the finish, and was left to rue a puncture during the penultimate stage. Only 14.1s covered second to sixth in the end after VW pair Jari-Matti Latvala and Ogier won the final two stages and regained ground.
Ogier had hung on just behind the podium battle on day one as running first on the road proved less painful than on recent events. But the Saturday stages were tougher and he tumbled to a distant sixth place.
Latvala moved in the opposite direction, gaining confidence as the weekend progressed after starting Friday a long way off the pace and then fending off Ogier for fifth in their late intra-team battle.
Craig Breen emerged on top of what he insisted should not be seen as a head-to-head with his rival for a 2017 Citroen drive Stephane Lefebvre.
After they had been tied together for most of the rally, Lefebvre gained an advantage with his first stage win on Saturday afternoon, only to then crash on Sunday's second stage. Despite severe left-rear damage, Lefebvre and PH Sport were able to get the car repaired at service and he continued to finish 12th, while Breen was seventh.
Eric Camilli outperformed M-Sport Ford team-mate Mads Ostberg for most of the weekend only to lose eighth to the sister car when he damaged his rear suspension in a crash after the finish of the penultimate stage. Camilli limped home in ninth.
Dani Sordo was closing on them both on Sunday morning before damaging the front of his car on SS19 and then his rear suspension on SS20, the latter damage terminal.
That allowed Teemu Suninen to claim 10th overall as he won WRC2 in his ORECA Skoda after a hard-fought weekend battling M-Sport's Elfyn Evans and works Fabia men Esapekka Lappi and Pontus Tidemand.

 

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[h=2]WRC: Tires could peg back WRC 2017 speed increase[/h] Monday, 18 July 2016


RACER Staff
The expected pace increase of the 2017 World Rally Cars could be pegged back by the tire specification the faster machinery will require.
There have been concerns over the speeds next year's significant increase in power will bring, but that is forcing Michelin and DMACK into a redesign of their World Rally Championship tires.
DMACK managing director Dick Cormack said the extra power would mean much higher tire wear, and the changes required to ensure adequate longevity will reduce grip and limit speeds.
"Michelin and us are aware there will be a significant increase in the level of wear, particularly on gravel," Cormack told Autosport. "That means a compound and possibly even a pattern change to deal with that.
"If we increase the tread width, that will give the tire more life, but at the same time you really need to reduce the gap between the tread blocks and inevitably that's going to reduce the grip."
Cormack believes the revised tires will make life even harder for the championship leader running first on the road.
"On a clean line the drivers will still get compound grip," he said, "but for the driver first on the road, it looks like there could be even less grip next year."
The prospect of limiting drivers to a single set of tires for each day of a WRC round to save costs has also been discussed, but Cormack was not in favor.
"There's a difference between the endurance side of this sport and world championship rallying," he said. "The WRC is about going as fast as you can on every stage and running one set per day would really compromise that.
"These cars cost £450,000 (almost $600,000) each and the topic of conversations is about saving £250 ($330) on a tire. It doesn't seem to make sense."

 

[h=2]WRC: Meeke builds Rally Finland lead over VWs[/h] Friday, 29 July 2016 Kris Meeke already holds a comfortable Rally Finland lead over the WRC Volkswagens after problems for early sparring partner Ott Tanak.


Living up to VW chief Jost Capito's prediction that running eighth on the road would allow Meeke's PH Sport-run Citroen to dominate, the Northern Irishman ended Friday morning's five-stage loop 18.8 seconds clear of Jari-Matti Latvala's Polo. But for the day's first three stages, Meeke had been in a close fight with Tanak.
Finland is the second of the two rallies DMACK has put specific focus on, and Tanak immediately replicated the kind of pace that nearly brought him victory in Poland at the start of July. A stage win on Jukojarvi put Tanak with 0.7s of Meeke, but he then found himself spinning on a straight on the following Surkee stage due to what turned out to be a suspension breakage on his Ford Fiesta.
Tanak nursed the car through the rest of that stage and Horkka, so heads for service still in 10th overall and 53.9s off the lead.
Latvala won two of the morning's five stages and would be right with Meeke but for a mistake on Jukojarvi that damaged a tire. It eventually delaminated and ripped chunks from the VW's rear bodywork and wing, though this only cost Latvala 16s and made little difference to his pace thereafter as he quickly moved back up from fifth to second.
Sebastien Ogier is making the best of being first on the road in third, just 4.5s behind Latvala.
The third VW of Andreas Mikkelsen is fourth, but just 0.2s ahead of Thierry Neuville, despite the Hyundais struggling for pace during the morning.
Neuville's team-mate Hayden Paddon is back in eighth, with Kevin Abbring 12th behind WRC2 leader Esapekka Lappi as he stands in for the injured Dani Sordo.
Meeke's teammate Craig Breen ran as high as fourth thanks to some very rapid stage times. Outbraking himself and having to turn round in an escape road on Horkka meant he dropped to sixth, though, ahead of Mads Ostberg.

 

[h=2]When WRC places a tractor chicane on the course are they trying to kill someone?[/h] "It was done with the FIA's measurements regarding how much free space there has to be between the obstacles and the regulation doesn't define what the obstacle should be."

http://www.racer.com/templates/world...icane-on-stage



WRC: Drivers angry over tractor chicane on Finland stage

Tuesday, 02 August 2016

RACER staff
The use of tractors to make a chicane on a Rally Finland stage has been deemed "irresponsible" by World Rally Championship drivers and teams.
Two tractors promoting event sponsor Valtra were positioned in the formation of a chicane on the Harju spectator stage run on the first two days of the event.
VIDEO: HARJU STAGE FEATURING TRACTOR CHICANE:

WRC champion Sebastien Ogier said drivers were particularly concerned because the chicane was on an asphalt section where they were running gravel tires, making grip levels lower, particularly if it rained.
There was also a feeling among crews that the move was in poor taste given Formula 1 driver Jules Bianchi's impact with a trackside recovery vehicle in the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix.
"We talked about this straight after the recce and said, 'This can't be serious!'" said Ogier. "The FIA is fighting for road safety and in F1 we see such bad accidents involving tractors.
"OK, our cars are a little bit safer with more [protection] around us and we don't arrive with the same speed, but anyway there's no point to do that – it's not really clever.
"We asked for these to be removed after we drove the stage on Thursday night for the second time we went to the stage on Friday, but they were not."
Volkswagen team principal Jost Capito backed his driver's stance.
"It was irresponsible to allow this to happen," he said. "Tractors have no place on a stage."
Rally Finland clerk of the course Kai Tarkiainen stood by the decision to place the tractors on the stage as part of the commercial tie-up with manufacturer Valtra.
"The company consulted with me to see if that could be done," Tarkiainen said. "I consulted the FIA and then made the decision. We measured everything and considered everything that could happen.

"It was done with the FIA's measurements regarding how much free space there has to be between the obstacles and the regulation doesn't define what the obstacle should be."

 

[h=2]WRC: Toyota promises surprises with design[/h] Tuesday, 09 August 2016
Toyota will surprise its opposition with a different car concept when it returns to the World Rally Championship in 2017, says the project's technical chief.


After an absence of nearly two decades, Toyota has linked up with four-*time WRC champion Tommi Makinen's team to build a Yaris to the series' new regulations next year.
Testing so far has been carried out with a mule car based on the current Yaris road car design, but chief of engineering Tom Fowler said the final model will stand apart from the rest of the field.
"The overall concept is quite different [to rivals' cars]," he said. "It's too early for me to explain where these differences are physically with the car, that would give away something we feel will be an advantage to us."
Fowler added that while the body shape would change, the mechanical elements of the 2017 car were already in use on the test machine.
"Underneath it's not so different," he said. "We're able to produce the current test cars using data for the 2017 road car, so on the outside the test car looks like a 2015 car, but on the inside it's a 2017 car."
He hinted at major aerodynamic advances when the definitive 2017 design appears.
"In the previous generation cars there was not much targeting on aerodynamics," said Fowler. "Going to the other extreme, if you look at Formula 1 cars, they will compromise every single suspension component for a small amount of aero.
"Now that's not something that rallying has ever seen before and it's not to say we will fully compromise everything for aero, but the balance has changed."
Toyota's official motorsport arm in Cologne had begun work on a WRC project before Makinen's organisation in Finland was given the nod instead.
Fowler said "nothing" had been carried over from the TMG Yaris to the Makinen design, but that the team was working "very closely" with the factory on the engine. Though facilities and a car have had to be created from scratch, Fowler said coming back in to coincide with the major rule change was good timing for Makinen and Toyota.
"We start with a clean sheet of paper and that's the advantage," he said. "We are starting from a position that doesn't give us many advantages, but that's one. We have no old parts to carry over or feel obliged to use for financial or practicality reasons. Everything on our car is bespoke for the new regulations."