Photo Credit: FIA ERC
This particular page on my blog makes me sad. I really like the header photo but I never know what to write about the European Rally Championship. For something that was formerly so great, particularly in the iRC days, I now barely find myself following the rallies anymore.
Why is that? Honestly I'm not 100% sure, but the success of our national championship, the MSA British Rally Championship, amongst other things could be doing the damage. Here are four reasons I think the FIA European Rally Championship is on the decline. British involvement & intervention
You can try and deny it to yourself if you like, I have, but the simple matter of the fact is when a Brit is involved in something you are far more interested. Whether it be Nigel Farage meeting Donald Trump in America, a British citizen involved in a particular tragedy or in this instance Craig Breen in the European Rally Championship, interest levels dip when somebody close to home is not involved.
It's the perfect move for Breen to enter the WRC, as he has worked hard to get there, but since leaving the ERC at the end of 2015 I have become less interested, and I doubt that's a coincidence. In all fairness, Breen also provided Kajetan Kajetanowicz with a serious title rival as his current nearest opposition, Alexey Lukyanuk, is still a little inconsistent, but not having somebody to back in the fully fledged championship does make a difference, not in the ERC's favour. And it couldn't really have come at a worse time, as British rally fans have been treated to the rejuvinated MSA British Rally Championship, which ran R5 category cars as well as the ERC. Naturally, the BRC has taken priority for viewing in this country, and to be honest I think it is a far more interesting and promising series than the ERC. And it would appear Alain Penasse and everybody else running the Ypres Rally in Belgium agree with me, as the Belgian classic is now a contributing round of the British Rally Championship despite being abroad, and no longer the European Rally Championship. This is a major blow for the ERC having already lost the Circuit of Ireland through its cancellation, it really couldn't afford to lose more key rallies. In all honesty, the calendar they have got is pretty healthy with Rally Zlin, the Azores and old WRC events in Cyprus and the Acropolis, but a few interesting rallies aren't going to be enough to captivate the die hard supporter yet alone casual rally fan. Lack of manufacturer presence
Another key part to any motor racing championship is manufacturer involvement. I personally love to see a whole range of makes battle for supremacy against the clock, and even more so when proper teams come and join the fray.
And unfortunately that is something that is beginning to happen less and less in the FIA's second-tier rally championship. In 2016, we did see the full monte of R5 cars from Ford, Skoda and Peugeot and Citroen throughout the year, but no manufacturer representatives with the exception of Jan Kopecky in the Czech Republic, and realistically it was only Fiestas and Fabias we saw. Wind back 5 years or so, to the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, and we saw S2000s from Skoda, Peugoet, Ford, Proton and on occasion Fiat, with works supported challenges from Skoda, Peugeot and Proton. I loved the 2011 iRC as the feature below this one on this page will tell you, and it demonstrates how far the bar has fallen that I couldn't tell you more than two drivers from the 2016 ERC.*
Photo Credit: FIA ERC
ERC Junior
This may seem a bit strange to ridicule arguably the strongest part of the European Rally Championship, but hear me out.
ERC Junior has been a massive success since being introduced a few years back, helping the careers of most notably Stephane Lefebvre who now has himself a contract to drive a Citroen C3 WRC in the World Rally Championship next year. Another main stay and likely beneficiary from the category has been Manchester driver Chris Ingram, who was incredibly unlucky to lose the title to team mate Marius Griebel with mechanical failure this year. But nevertheless his performances and experience working with Opel Motorsport will undoubtedly stand him in good stead in the future, and the ERC Junior has made a strong case for being the best junior formulae ahead of the Junior WRC. I would certainly struggle to say the WRC's version is the superior, put it that way. The ERC Junior has been further bolstered too with new prizes on offer, with two separate championships having been created. The snappily named ERC Junior Under 27 is for drivers, erm, under 27, and will be contested over six rounds in R2 speicifaction vehicles, with the drivers' best four results counting towards their championship. The winner will receive 100,000 euros to fund a campaign in ERC Junior Under 28 the following year, which incidentally is for drivers under the age of 28. Again contested across six rounds with four rallies contributing to the final championship tally, ERC-J U28 (sounds like the name of a printer let's not lie) allows drivers to compete in the increasingly popular R5 class. And the prize of a funded drive on a European round of the World Rally Championship in a 2016-spec WRC car is certainly not to be sniffed at. All in all, it is probably the place to be if you're a young hopeful gunning for the World Championship, but back to my point, if you take a moment and examine how much I've written in this sub-section compared to the two prior to this, you can see I have written a lot more and not even got to my point. But ironically, that is my point. Sense my excitement, enthusiasm, interest and appreciation for ERC Junior, which far exceeds my sentiment towards the main ERC series. And that can't be a strong reflection on the ERC. I'm not going to sit here, especially after singing the praises of ERC Junior, and tell you that having a strong and fruitful junior series is not important because it most definitely is, but the whole point of a junior series is to showcase and develop the sport's young and rising stars, not effectively have them steal the limelight from the main event. And for me, there is large potential for ERC Junior to do that next year. If it were up to me, I may actually be attempted to abolish the ERC and just run the junior championship. Then I would consider dumping the one make Junior WRC which is not at the level it used to be, and run a giant and gruelling series for up and coming youngsters. Imagine the entertainment value and interest levels there, and the eventual champion will have seriously proved his or her's mettle. Poor title fights
WRC-2 has the same problem here to be fair, and I think the issue mainly stems from only allocating a certain number of points scoring rounds, but the ERC since it took over from the iRC as the promoted Eurosport series, has yet to witness a proper championship fight.
In 2013, Jan Kopecky creamed his opposition and took what was a long overdue championship title, in 2014 despite promises of a challenge from Peugeot drivers Craig Breen and Kevin Abbring the title was Esapekka Lappi's in the older S2000 Fabia, with Pole Kajetan Kajetanowicz wrapping up two titles on the bounce in 2015 and 16 without too much challenge in his Ford Fiesta R5. The main issue really is, and to be fair it's hard to blame the ERC for this, that unlike the WRC there are no works teams, professional contracts and proper commitments meaning instead of seeing somebody for the full season, a driver may only do half the rounds, three quarters of them or maybe just one if it happens to be their local. This doesn't really create the season long tension that you strive for in a classic championship battle, because even if the points do come close, and this happened in WRC-2, the drama just isn't the same because quite often the championship protagonists aren't actually competing against each other. You may argue that it is unfair for me to comapre it to the WRC and that the championship hasn't actually been exciting in the WRC since 2011, and you may partially have a point, but in the WRC the full time commitment from drivers means you can monitor their progress, and follow the championship picture with more ease than you can with sporadic drives. And I did say that it's hard to blame the ERC for its round allocation system, but here I go again, back to those words "iRC 2011", but that was simply a supreme championship conclusion where there were no dropped events. And with that we saw committed campaigns from those in the title race. The ERC has just gone downhill, to the point where I don't pay attention anymore.
Photo Credit: FIA ERC
Do you agree?
I ran a poll on my Twitter account to see if fellow rally fans agreed with me, and as you can see people are very much divided on the issue, and provided some interesting comments about what they feel the state of the championship is. However, it looks as if the majority is with me.
Out of 30 votes, 15 believed the championship is dying, and a few gave their reasoning. Teemu / Rallirinki (@HartusvuoriWRC) said: "2017 calendar isn't doing @FIAERC any favours. Starts late with two island events, stays away from Central Europe until August." Nick Altersyke (@Rallyboy2009) replied: "True. Difficult to get rally fever from European fans when first events are so remotely based." And also said: "Original IRC had better events, more top end drivers. Maybe they should use ex-WRC cars now as top class to get interest back. More variety of events rather including Monte. Just lost it's publicity really since being ERC. Just realised .... losing Ypres in 2017 too!! Shocking decision for European championship." Are we right? Comment below and have your say, but even if still think the FIA ERC is of good standard, it's hard to argue that it hasn't gone downhill since the iRC days.
*2011 iRC drivers from memory: Andreas Mikkelsen, Jan Kopecky, Juho Hanninen, Freddy Loix, Bryan Bouffier, Thierry Neuville, Guy Wilks, Giandomenico Basso, Craig Breen, Patrik Sandell...
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ERCArticles covering the European Rally Championship Archives
April 2017
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