Rally-eMag 031 August 2015

Issue 31, August 2015

Germany

australia

barum

Plus: Kevin Abbring, The Dutchies, Molly Taylor, Oliver Ciesla, Jean-Baptiste Ley

Champs

got crowds?

Image: Bas Romeny

got flags?

Image: Bas Romeny

volkswagen as a

team are in a class

of their own but

there’s no doubt

who’s their golden

boy

Image: Bas Romeny

but first, let me take a selfie

Image: Bas Romeny

Rally-eMag August 2015 / Contents

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Who made it?

Publisher: Rally-eMag

Words: Steven van Veenendaal, Harry van Veenendaal.

Photography: Bas Romeny, Erik van ‘t Land

Who helped?

Logo design: Minse Blom

Backcover artwork: Dam Charles

Distribution: Issuu.com

Who we thank!

PR Photography from: Peugeot Sport, Hyundai Mo-torsport, Citroen Racing, FIA ERC, Volkswagen Motorsport, M-Sport, Red Bull Media Pool.

How to reach us?

Email: [email protected]: www.rally-emag.comFacebook: www.facebook.com/emagrallyTwitter: @emagrallyIssuu: www.issuu.com/rally-emag

featurepromotor talkCiesla & Ley talk WRC & ERC

Page 44 & 59

ColumnKevin AbbringLife in the Fast Lane

Page 25

WRCRally germanyrally australia Page 11 & 29

interviewmolly taylorThe Big Leap

Page 39

This month

ERCbarum RallyHomecoming Party

Page 52

ADAC Rallye Deutschland / Overview

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Based in: Trier

Date: 20-23/08/15

Number of stages: 21

Shortest stage: Arena Panzerplatte, 2.87 km

Longest stage: Panzerplatte Long, 45.61 km

Total stage distance: 374 km

Surface: Asphalt

ADAC Rallye Deutschland

Image: Bas Romeny

ADAC Rallye Deutschland / Review

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Volkswagen’s Vineyard Victory

Since joining the WRC, Volkswa-gen won every rally on the calen-dar, apart from Germany. In their home country they netted only one third place in two rallies. So this year there was a certain pressure on the shoulders of the drivers. Still they looked quite relaxed and con-fident. Mathematically Ogier could clinch the title here. Understand-ably that was not his main con-cern. “We have to score a good result here for the team,” he said. And that is the way they started the event.

Words: Harry van Veenendaal

Images: Bas Romeny


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Three events in one

The German round in the WRC originated from three famous events in the 80’s and 90’s of last century: The Hunsrück Rallye, that focussed on the infamous Baumholder stages, the Saarland Rallye, contested on the typical narrow but very fast country roads in the Saarland region and the Deutschland Rallye that was partly run around and on the Nürburgring and the Mosel vine-yards. The three organizing committees joined forces and together founded a WRC contender the Deutschland Rallye of today. Every year there are changes in the event but basically the three ingredients that made these three events can still be found in the rally of today. “This makes it es-pecially tricky,” Jari Matti Latvala told us. “In my notes I have seven types of surfaces. Ranging

from smooth asphalt to cobbles, concrete slabs and everything in between. Some parts have a lot of grip but are extremely abrasive, so if you push on these roads you know your tyres are dead when you reach the next section that could be a surface with very low grip.” Also driving height I an issue. So sometimes drivers have to adjust it between two stages. Andreas Mikkelsen voices the real fears of most drivers: “I don’t care too much about the difference in surfaces, as long as it is dry. If it rains here it’s a disaster!”

The teams

In the Citroën team we see a third car (in the old livery and with the 2014 specs) for Stéphane Lefebvre. It is his first test event for the French team that consider him to be a promise for the

future. Kevin Abbring is present again as the fourth driver in the Hyundai team for his third stint. Also Jaroslav Melichárek and Graham Cof-fey found themselves a budget for a WRC drive and both acquired a Fiesta RS WRC. For the rest everyone is there so the line up is as we know it from the rest of the season, bringing the total number of World Rally Cars to seventeen. That’s the number of competitors according to the en-try list. However Lorenzo Bertelli did not actually compete. Both he and his team were in the ser-vice park in Trier, but the Italian privateer did not feel well enough to finalize the pre-event recce. At the end of Wednesday he officially withdraws from the event as he doesn’t feel fit to drive. We had planned an interview with him but by that time the Italian was already on his way home.

Latvala explains that even though Germany is a tarmac event, there are still seven different surfaces to contend with. Promising youngster Stephane Lefebvre made his WRC debut in Germany.


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The stages

The vineyard stages

Throughout the event the most spe-cific stages are the ones in the Mosel district. In the vineyards facing the Mosel river the drivers will meet nar-row roads with bumpy asphalt, then junctions to wider streets with smooth asphalt and of course many hairpins in all varieties. The undergrowth often hides the sides of the roads. Some-times these are razor sharp some-times not but it is hard to know for sure, so cutting the bends is not ad-visable, if you prevent punctures.

Saarland

These are again quite specific coun-try lanes; sometimes crossing villag-es, narrow with usually reasonable road surfaces and very fast often blind corners.

Baumholder

The venue for some of the most im-portant stages is the United States Army Garrison Baumholder. Some 3000 American soldiers and civilians live here in the area also known as “the Rock”. Apart from the army bar-racks the site comprises hundreds of kilometres of roads that meander along “The Rock”. Inside the installa-tion there is a training school for op-

erating all kinds of military vehicles. The training site for tanks and other armoured vehicles is the so called Panzerplatte. Here the US soldiers learn how to operate tanks on all kinds of surfaces from cobbles to concrete slabs. All tracks are lined with ‘Hinkel-steine’ preventing the tanks from get-ting off the roads. The Hinkelsteine are concrete bollards that are under-ground for three quarters of their size. Only one quarter (perhaps some fifty centimetres) sticks above ground. It is especially these Hinkelsteine that make the Panzerplatte into a very special venue for rally stages. Many a competitor found out the hard way that rally cars are no match for these bollards. A tiny scratch on the bollard usually means a totally wrecked rally-car. Add to that the very sharp edg-es of the concrete and the abrasive nature of some of the smaller roads and you understand that tyre pres-ervation is of the utmost importance here. The Panzerplatte is in a sun baked valley where both ambient and road surface temperatures can rise quite quickly but it also functions as a bath tub if the rain comes. The cob-bles and concrete then change into speed skating rinks. “But,” as Latvala indicated. “It is the only place where sometimes you can take a breath as there are some long stretches as well. In the other stages there is no room for that.”

Vineyards, high speeds and ‘Hinkelsteine’ form the challenges in Germany


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Rally festival in Trier

Thousands of rallyfans came to the oldest city in Germany Trier. There with the famous Porta Nigra as a backdrop the competitors gathered for the festive ceremonial start of the German WRC qualifier. This morning’s shakedown had seen Latvala as fast-est, just 0.2 second faster than Mik-kelsen. Meeke was third and Ogier fourth, 0.8 seconds slower than Lat-vala. So it was clear, the heat is on!

Horse on the track

A glorious sunshine opened the first day of real rallying. It was a tricky stage with good roads going down the valley. A lot of downhill corners and even hairpins plus changing grip levels made braking quite an issues as many of the drivers later explained. Ott Tänak provided the first scare. “I just went through a fence,” he com-mented. YouTube footage showed a slightly different story. He destroyed a fence but was stopped by an Armco barrier. Not far behind him the stage had to be stopped because horses found their freedom and were walk-ing on the stage. Kevin Abbring was stopped at the start line and had to wait some ten minutes before he could start his first asphalt challenge in a real World Rally Car. The whole morning Ogier won three stages and Latvala one. The differences were small however and at the end of the

morning Latvala had a tiny advantage of 0.1 seconds. Behind Latvala, Ogier and Mikkelsen were second and third.

The day continues.

In the afternoon is fastest on all stages and at the end of the day Latvala is facing a gap of just under 10 seconds. The gap between third man Mikkelsen and Ogier is already 35 seconds. This may look like an uneventfull day, but there are quite a few people who think differently. The first one to disagree would be Kris Meeke. Unfortunately he again made a mistake. He went off, damaged the nose of his DS3 and lost quite some time, throwing him out of contention for a top classification. Robert Kubica is in the same league. Just like Meeke he can be very fast, but there is al-ways a mistake. There was no change in Germany. In the morning he had changed a note describing a corner from ‘four’ to ‘six’. Five might have been better, because he ended up in a vineyard where vines and grapes blocked his view, so after getting out of his awkward position he kicked out his front window. The cockpit was not a very pleasant place to be, or as Kubica dryly explained: “there was some turbulence in the car.” So on the last stage of the day they had to wear goggles making them look rather vin-tage.


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Elfyn Evans had some problems with the hand-brake causing him to loose time. Finally Martin Prokop wasn’t a happy camper either. On the first stage of the afternoon he left the road and not much later it happened again. It threw him back some one and a half minute and at the end of the day he was 12th overall.

Baumholder dayThough there were two other stages, the focus was on Baumholder. There on the infamous Panzerplatte, the competitors had to face two a stage of no less than 45 kilometers has to be tackled twice and a short stage just under three kilomeres that has to be run three times. But be-fore they arrive at Baumholder the competitors

first have to run the Grafschaft and Bosenberg stages of 18 and 17 kilometres respectively. The first one is for Ogier who widens the gap to Lat-vala who is third on the stage. A surprising sec-ond on this stage is Elfyn Evans. On the next one it is Latvala who is a bit faster so gaining back the time he lost earlier. The cat and mouse game between the two VW drivers continues but Ogier really makes a difference on the two long stages and at the end of the day the distance between the Frenchman and the Finn is over half a minute, too much to hope for a win, but enough to keep Ogier from winning the championship in Germany. Latvala resigned to his fate: “It’s not like in Finland, where we can go flat out. To be able to give 100% you have to feel

100% confidence and I don’t have that here.”

To finish first…

It’s a somewhat hackneyed expression but still very true, specially if you look at Volkswagen’s track record in their home country. But this time Ogier did make it to the end finished first. How-ever he apparently slowed down a little as he did not win the PowerStage, that one was for Latva-la. Mikkelsen surrendered quite some time ago but equalled his last year’s result and made it a Volkswagen 1, 2, 3! Finally the ‘Deutschland jinx’ was broken. Kris Meeke found some solace in gaining two championship points by finishing as runner up on the PowerStage.

Volkswagen finally took their first home win by the hands of Ogier and Ingrassia... ...despite Latvala’s best efforts, who wasn’t confident enough to push them to the max.

ADAC Rallye Deutschland / Round-up

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Round-up

Volkswagen World Rallyteam M-Sport World Rally TeamVolkswagen had a score to settle in

Germany. In their three year career in the WRC, theirbest result was a third place and they desperately wanted a home win. There seemed to be no special pressure on them however. At the Wednesday happy hour the drivers were relaxed. Tough they did think Germany was a tricky rally due to its many chang-ing surfaces.

Sébastien Ogier had to work hard through the first one and a half day, but his confidence in the long slippery Panzerplatte stages was better than that of his teammate Latvala. So he placed his decid-ing strike there. After the winning Baumholder stages the Frenchman backed of a little and uncharacter-istically did not fight for the Pow-erStage. Winning in Germany was more important. And so he did. His championship is still very near and he propably wil get it in Australia.

Latvala showing his good form was never far from the lead. But an Ogier at his best is still hard to grab for the Finn. Especially in the German terrain where he still lacks 100% of confidence. And, as he indicated himself: “In order to catch

Ogier here your confidence and feeling should be 100% otherwise you can’t successfully attack. But together with Ogier he was the ab-solute top that no one could reach. He showed this, not only with his whole performance here, but also this by his PowerStage win, a sur-prising win, even to himself. Ogier might have backed off a bit; Meeke was on a mission to grab the maxi-mum points. But Meeke on a mis-sion was not enough to stop Lat-vala.

Andreas Mikkelsen was the third man in the Volkswagen team and on the podium. On the opening day he might have been a bit over cau-tious throwing him out of contention for the lead. But he secured his third place and used the stages for an extended test in preparation of the other asphalt rounds to come. Of course he looked closely at the leaderboard ensuring his follow-ers would not ne a threat. But no one came within striking distance and he ended up being third, much to the delight of Jost Capito who could another 1, 2, 3 to his tally and this time in Germany, which gave the result an extra shine.

M-Sport has a good car and both Elfyn Evans and Ott Tänak are able drivers. But unfortu-nately in Finland that did not become clear looking at the leaderboard. Both Evans and Tänak broke some suspension parts and had to limp through the Friday stages. It earned Evans the mechanic of the day award for mending a broken suspension using a spanner and some clips. At the end of the day that keeps you in the

race and that is important to gain experience but it doesn’t bring you victory flowers. Even-tually Evans finished 12th.

Tänak did reasonably well on the next two days and his de-termination was rewarded by a fifth place. But as always Malcolm Wilson finds some positives: “We’ve seen some great times from both drivers throughout the weekend which is really encouraging...”

ADAC Rallye Deutschland / Round-up

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Neuville had some medio-cre performances that even made his team management say “he perhaps should look at his driving more than at other things.” In Germany however he came back. He started, like almost everyone, a bit cautious as in Germany there is always a chance to suddenly lose your grip and end up rolling your car, as the Belgian very well remem-bers from last year. But once confidence came back he could challenge former Germany winner Sordo. He did not win that battle but his fifth place less than half a minute behind team mate Sordo won him precious points for both himself and the team.

The main aim for Hyundai in Germany was to secure second place in the con-structor’s championship, so if both of cars end up in front of only one point scoring Citroen you cannot be anything else than happy. So previous winner Dani Sordo was reasonably happy. Though he was not happy with the fact he could not fight harder against the VW squad. But finish-ing fourth and grabbing an extra point for finishing the PowerStage did bring a smile to his face. Being the best non Volkswagen driver an beating your team mate is enough cause for this smile.

Hayden Paddon proved to be very fast the last few gravel events. But although

still quite fast he still lacks a bit of asphalt experi-ence. So he used the first day of Germany to go back to school and tried

to go faster the next day. A problem with the turbo slowed his pace a bit, but in the end he was not too unhappy with his results.

For Dutchman Kevin Abbring Germany was his third event with the team, the first one on asphalt. On his first stage there was already a small hiccup. Horses were running on the stage and the start was postponed, Abbring being the first victim. “It is not ideal to be stopped at the start of a stage”, he said. “But this is not why I’m not performing as I would have liked to. The balance is not as I want it.” A faulty differential seemed to be the answer, but it still did not make the car to his liking. Some experiments with different kinds of braking pads and diff settings made him decide to stick to a certain kind and to adapt his braking style. It was now half-way the Saturday, but the smile on his face grew again and his comments after the finish on Sunday were positive.

‘You look relaxed,’ we told Mads Østberg at the Friday mid-day regroup. “Yeah a bit too relaxed,” he answered, sip-ping his coffee. “I might need a bigger one,” he smiled indicating his coffee cup. Still his performance was lacking a bit for someone of his stature. He can’t be happy with a remark by his boss Yves Matton: “Mads showed he is ca-pable of fighting in the midfield.” The Norwegian is better than that only it did not show. But at least he crossed the finish line unscaves and in a point scoring seventh position.

The same cannot be said for Kris Meeke who again showed, at best, to be unfortunate. Not very good in a rally that was one of the three that Matton said he would use to evaluate his drivers. If you look at most of the stages you could say he was performing better than his ‘relaxed’ team colleague. He was the only one to challenge the VW clan until in stage six he again he made his costly mistake that unfortunately we know him for since quite some time. The rest of the rally he managed to do quite a few top three times and he al-most grabbed the PowerStage win. But the overall conclu-sion can only be hat his seat in the 2016 Citroën team (if there is one…) is in jeopardy.

Another concern for the northern Irishman might be Stéphane Lefebvre. Yves Matton recruited this young Frenchman into the team. He was rewarded with a DS3 WRC drive for his performances last year and it was his competitive debut in such a top car. His task was to stay out of trouble and to gain as much experience as possi-ble. His performance was ‘beyond expectation’, as Mat-ton phrased it. After the rally he was drafted to compete in the team again during Rally Corsica. His experience is nowhere near that of Meeke but another good result might make Matton wonder…

Overall it was not a good rally for the French however. Hyundai spoiled it for them by grabbing back the runner up position in the constructors’ championship.

Citroen Total Abu Dhabi WRTHyundai Shell World Rally Team

RK World Rallyteam For Robert Kubica it was over before it even started. After shakedown the mechanics noticed a serious malfunction in his engine and together the team de-cided to fit a new engine. So before the start Kubica got a five-minute penalty. But we know Kubica; he doesn’t give up and tackled the rally as a prolonged high-speed test. This test more or less stopped when he went off into the vines. Grapes and vines got stuck in his broken windscreen and blurred his vi-sion so he had to kick the windscreen out to be able to see something. On the final stage of the day he and co-driver Maciek Szczepaniak had to wear gog-gles, because, as Kubica stated: “there was some turbulence in the car…” On Saturday, a ‘Hinkelstein’ caught him out, as many before him. The Hinkelstein proved to be stronger than his suspension and that was it for Saturday. On Sunday he did return but the car was not feeling right for him. Still the driver from Poland is clear about his intentions: “Perhaps I’m more a racing driver than a rally driver, but I know I’m still passionate and can improve by gaining ex-perience. Because rallying is all about experience!” Whether he will continue next year is not clear yet but missing Australia had already been planned. So his next challenge will be on the French Island of Cor-sica. All on tarmac again, but nowhere near the kind of tarmac you’ll find on a proper racetrack.

Fuckmatié World Rallyteam For Lorenzo Bertelli the ADAC Rallye Deutschland was a very short experience. He did not even make it to the start, as during recce he got sick. A suspected food poisoning side-lined him and he went home on Thursday. Very unfortunate, for him and the team, but also for us at Rally-eMag, as we planned to inter-view him.

Jipocar Czech National Team

A successful test session, including a test drive with one of the Rally-eMag photographers, Erik van ‘t Land, did not bring success to Martin Prokop. Perhaps it gave him some extra confidence but that apparently did not help him. It all started during the second loop of Friday stages when he went off and hit a tree. He did manage to get going again but his Fiesta was far from immaculate and had to be persuaded to make it to the end of the leg. A solid point scoring finish was not on the agenda anymore, but on Friday he started again only to be slowed again, this time a broken driveshaft caused a whole new, three-wheel drive ver-sion, of his car. At service this of course was fixed but in the afternoon he got a puncture that did not boost his stage time. So much frustra-tion would have been enough for some drivers to call it a day. Not for Prokop though. On Sunday he was there again only to find out lady luck had completely abandoned him. One puncture on the first morning stage could be fixed, but another one stopped him completely as he only took one spare. How much misfortune can you get in one rally?

ADAC Rallye Deutschland / Results

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Overall final classification

1. Ogier/Ingrassia Volkswagen Polo R WRC 3:35.49.52. Latvala/Anttila Volkswagen Polo R WRC + 23.03. Mikkelsen/Floene Volkswagen Polo R WRC + 1:56.64. Sordo/Marti Hyundai i20 WRC + 2:09.35. Neuville/Gilsoul Hyundai i20 WRC + 2:23.86. Evans/Barrit Ford Fiesta RS WRC + 2:52.17. Østberg/Andersson Citroën DS 3 WRC + 3:12.58. Tanak-Molder Ford Fiesta RS WRC +4:26.69. Paddon-Kennard Hyundai i20 WRC + 4:46.810. Lefebvre-Prévot Citroën DS 3 WRC + 4:54.5

2015 FIA WRCManufacturers’ Standings

1. Volkswagen Motorsport 3002. Hyundai Motorsport 1613. Citroën Total Abu Dhabi WRT 1484. M-Sport WRT 1385. Volkswagen Motorsport II 64 6. Hyundai Motorsport N 45 7. Jipocar Czech National Team 65 8. FWRT 9

ADAC Rallye Deutschland / Standings

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2015 FIA WRCDrivers’ Standings1. Sébastien Ogier 2072. Jari-Matti Latvala 1143. Andreas Mikkelsen 984. Mads Østberg 905. Thierry Neuville 806. Elfyn Evans 617. Kris Meeke 568. Ott Tänak 549. Dani Sordo 5210. Hayden Paddon 46

the dutchies As we are based in The Netherlands, we’ve got to show some love for our Dutch compatriots tackling the WRC!

Words: Harry van Veenendaal; Images: Erik van ‘t Land

Rally-eMag / The Dutchies

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On the start list of Rally Germany we found four competitors from the Netherlands. In our update pages on this event you can read about all the adventures of Kevin Abbring who is in the Hyundai manufacturers team. In this article we focus on two young Dutchmen competing in the Drive DMack Fiësta Trophy and a somewhat older young man who came here for the 39th time.

Still going strongAt seventy years of age you can call someone a somewhat older young man. Henk Vossen cer-tainly fits into this category. His birth certificate indicates his formal age as 70, but in motivation and determination he definitely still equals quite a few younger young men. This year for the 39th time, he was on the starting list in Germany again. We did not check the history of the event but we can hardly imagine someone having been here for a longer period than Henk Vossen. A former Dutch champion who competed in quite a few WRC events during his very long career. Your senior editor (senior as in ‘old’) remembers see-ing him in the very first WRC event he covered: the 1981 Rallye Monte Carlo! And that was not even Vossen’s first Monte. In Germany Vossen did well and steered his Mitsubishi through the vineyards and the Panzerplatte. “I have to admit that sometimes, for comfort, I brake a bit earlier than I did long ago, but I still enjoy it tremendous-ly. My goal for this rally is to finish and to come back next year for my 40th! In the final stand-ings of his 39th event in Germany he finished on a very appropriate 39th place. We hope to see him again in 2016 and we hope to be present for his fortieth.

DDFTIn DDFT we saw Kevin van Deijne and Mats van

de Brand. For the first time they were on as-phalt. Especially for Mats van den Brand this was good, as he felt more at home on the hard surface. Can he beat the top drivers here on the surface where he feels more at home?

Mixed emotions

After the first day of rallying we find both driv-ers in the DDFT village. The first one we see is Mats van den Brand. He is having dinner with his team. His face does not reflect his relatively good position on the leaderboard. He is second behind Ghislain de Mevius. “They changed the mapping,” he tells us.

Rally-eMag / The Dutchies

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Every rally the M-Sport engineers change the mapping of the engine in order to give it the best performance for that particular event, so what? “They must have made a mistake, because the car doesn’t react as I want it to.” His team manager tries to calm him down a bit and then he can tell us it went quite well and that he is now runner up in the DDFT class. “We started with a scratch this morning, and that was exactly what we were aiming for but then the trouble with the engine started and now De Mevius is too far away,” he says. But it’s good to see we can leave behind top drivers like Cave, Vatanen en Aasen. On gravel I’m lacking experience but here I can show them who I am. Let’s hope the mapping problem will be over tomorrow so that we can defend this runner up spot”.

One table further we see a brightly smiling Kevin van Deijne. “Every-thing went well today and we are happy to be in third. It was our goal to reach a podium finish in the DDFT and now we have reached that I will do everything to keep Vatanen (who is in fourth, ed.) behind us. It’s only 7 seconds but we trust we can keep that distance.

Day 2When on the evening of day 2, we came back to the service, some

time before the drivers in the DDFT competition arrive in their ‘village’ we already see two cars. One is under a large cover and the other one is being worked on frantically. A lot of welding seems to be done and sparks are flying al over the place. It’s Kevin van Deijne’s car. The driver is nowhere in sight. When we finally reach him he tells his story. “This morning we had a good felling but on the Panzerplatte everything went wrong. In a hairpin I went off and hit something. Unfortunately we could not continue so that was the end of our fight for a podium finish.” The M-Sport mechanics did manage to repair the stricken Fiesta R2 so the next day Van Deijne could do Rally 2, but his goal had not been reached. A bit later we see Mats van den Brand. He is busy talking to the WRC TV cameras before he has time for us. “We had a good day today, Martijn my navigator was good, the car was good and I was good. We had a slight off on one of the Panzerplatte stages but for the rest everything was OK. We are still some 1.5 minutes behind on De Mevius and about the same amount of time behind us is Vatanen, so all we have to do tomorrow is a sensible drive.” At the finish he proved to have been sensible and finishes in second. Thanks to Rally2 regula-tions Kevin van Deijne can also start again and though not fully com-mitted is glad he can gather some points for the trophy by bringing his car home in 6th.

Column / Kevin Abbring

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life in the fast lane Column by Kevin Abbring

Kevin AbbringHyundai Mobis

World Rally Team

From the outside it may seem that the life of a rally driver is all about flying across the world to beautiful locations to get into a car and compete in a rally. While that may be partly true, there is a lot more to it. In this brand new section we asked Hyundai factory driver Kevin Abbring to provide us with insights into what it actually takes to be a driver competing in the top level of rallying. In his monthly column Kevin will share his monthly activities, giving you a glimpse inside the life of a rally driver.

Images: Bas Romeny

Hi everyone, it has been another busy month with visits to Trinidad, and many other countries. Want to know what I have been up to? Keep reading!

Trip to TrinidadThe month started with a short trip to Trinidad. Due to my schedule I was only able to stay there for two days but it was good fun nonetheless. How did I end up all the way over in the Carib-bean you might wonder? I met a guy from Suri-name years ago when I worked for a company called Prodrive Training, we got along really well and kept in touch. Sometimes when he was in Holland he would rent a car and we would go drifting together. I would give him some training and we had a good time. This year he is com-peting in the Trinidad Rally Championship and he asked me if I could help him with the setup of the chassis of his car to squeeze some more performance out of it.

It’s always good to drive different cars though I have to be careful not to want too many things at the same time, my priorities have changed so I’m mainly focussing on the future with Hyundai Motorsport now. It was a special place though! So I went over there and spent a day working on the setup of the car and sat down with all the team members in the evening to prepare eve-rything for the rally. The following day was the actual rally itself, where I did some team man-agement tasks. It was quite interesting to work at such a rally, as some things work a bit differently then the WRC events. Trinidad is in the Carib-bean after all, so a more laid back approach would be expected. That’s not to say that they

don’t take their rallying seriously, it’s just a dif-ferent mindset; having fun is the number one priority. During the pre-event briefing we were told the rally would start a bit later than planned because not all teams had arrived yet. And halfway through the rally we were granted the opportunity to do some additional recceing as some corners had been changed a bit. As the rally was then running a bit behind schedule, the organizers asked the teams if some of the transit time between stages could be shortened a bit because the rally was taking a bit too long. All these are unheard of in a WRC event of course, but in Trinidad they have a more easy going ap-proach and since everybody agreed, why would there be a problem to change things up a bit? In the end my friend finished the rally second in Group N so sporting-wise it was a successful event as well. A short but nice experience where I met lots of great people!

Rally GermanyAfter that tropical adventure it was time for my third event this season in the Hyundai i20 WRC, Rally Germany. It was an event I was really look-ing forward to as it was my first rally in the WRC on tarmac and also an event I have some expe-rience in, but also because there were so many Dutch fans! The rally itself was quite difficult for me, but seeing so many Dutch flags around the stages made up for a lot of it.

“The rally itself was quite difficult for me, but seeing so many Dutch flags around the stagesmade up for a lot of it.”

Column / Kevin Abbring

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During our pre-event test we encountered an is-sue with the car that caused it to behave strangely under braking. We thought we found and solved the issue near the end of the test but during the shakedown it returned. It continued during the ral-ly and although the team tried their best to solve it by changing the gearbox and the rear diff, the issue persisted. In the end we concluded that the only difference between my car and the other three i20’s were the brake pads. I like to use brake pads that aren’t that aggressive as they suit my driving style the best, but it turns out that they don’t work well with the chosen diff setup. As it was my first test in the current i20 WRC we didn’t try too many different things as time passed by quickly with the issues we’d faced. It was a bit of an eye-opener for all of us because actually it doesn’t really make sense that that combination creates such issues. The good thing is that now we know, but it was of course quite an expensive ‘test’ to find it out dur-ing the rally. To be honest I don’t think we would have gained a lot of places if we hadn’t had the problems, as the competition in Germany was re-ally strong. Still I would have liked to have had a shot at a top ten finish.

From a competitive perspective Rally Germany thus turned out quite disappointing for us, but for me personally it was still a special event due to all the Dutch fans. To be honest I think there were more Dutch fans than French or Belgian fans. It’s great to see that the sport really lives in The Neth-erlands and it’s quite special that so many made the trip to Trier. Some might have been on holiday in the area and convinced their families to go to the rally while other die-hard fans are working at the rally as officials or are making the trip to Trier just for the rally. Either way, for me it’s great to re-ceive so much support during the event.

Interview / Martin Prokop

I say during, but really it already started be-fore the rally at the recce. Throughout the entire recce we saw just one flag, and you guessed it, it was a Dutch one! Those flags are really great for support because you see them everywhere during the stages. They can hang them on the straw bales and in other areas where the spectators can’t stand, but they are clearly visible from the car. I have to admit, although I usually never do this, I couldn’t help myself from waving a couple of times during the stages!

And it is not just the flags, at every regroup or refuel area, anywhere you park, there were Dutch fans and when you enter the service area and exit the car, you almost feel like a rockstar. They start clapping and cheering

for you; it’s amazing. But at the same time it is also quite difficult to handle, because you simply don’t have the time to go and say hi to everyone. It even made me feel a bit guilty from time to time because I don’t want to disappoint those fans that are waiting at service, but also when we arrive we have a lot of work to do with the engineer and team. This is all part of the learning process of be-ing a WRC driver and something I still need to properly balance for myself. At times the PR guys had to tell me to go back inside and I hope that the fans understand that no matter how much I want to go and socialize with them, to give them something back for their support, it’s just not always possible to do so.

TV ShowsThis month also featured quite a bit of TV work for me. The Monday directly after Rally Germany I spent the day with the crew of RTL Germany who recorded some clips for their show on Rally Germany from the passen-ger seat of my car. After taking them and some other guests for a couple of spins I went to France that same evening because the next day I gave circuit training for a Korean TV show. It was really interesting to work with people from a different culture.

I also appeared on a Dutch TV show, RTL Autovisie. The producers of the show felt that I deserved a bit of spotlight as we have a young talented driver in F1 (Max Verstappen) who everybody in The Netherlands knows, but we also have a guy who is doing the same thing in the WRC, who nobody apart from the rallying enthusi-asts seems to have ever heard of. They want to help to bring some awareness to that. The show itself was mainly about cars, not specifically about rallying though. My fellow guest was former judo World Champion and Olympic Bronze medalist Dennis van der Geest, who has a great sense of humor and is just a great personal-ity in general. It was really nice to meet him.

It is TV, so they had show some eye-catching action footage and decided to start things of with my crash in Ypres, which led to a good discussion about the team-work involved with rallying between driver and co-driv-er. It also allowed me to explain some of the differences between track racing where you see you one corner a thousand times and rallying where you see a thousand corners once. It was a really enjoyable experience and a great opportunity to increase the profile of rallying as well as to develop my PR skills.

So those were the highlights of my month, talk to you in a month with more testing with the 2016 car and of course WRC Corsica!

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Coates Hire Rally Australia / Overview

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Based in: Coffs Harbour

Date: 10-13/09/15


Shortest stage: Settles Road, 6.40 km

Longest stage: Nambucca, 50.80 km


Surface: Gravel

coates hire rally australia

Image: PR

Coates Hire Rally Australia / Revieww

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the best ever

Sebastien Ogier was one of the most vehement critics of the highly road order system. Could he have been wrong here? Was it a good system after all? If you listen to him at the end of Rally Oz you might get that idea. “The best ever!” he said and not for the first time be-cause during the season we heard him say that phrase quite often. This best ever rally at least earned him his third world title!Words: Harry van Veenendaal

Images:PR


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Bailing out

Just 27 competitors made it to Australia. Among the regulars we find two drivers who are absent, both Robert Kubica and Martin Prokop decided not to do the expansive trip to the other side of the world. Another one not present at the start in Coff’s Harbour was Mads Østberg. He was in Australia though but was injured during a recce incident. A big truck coming to him on a narrow road blocked his passage. He jammed into the truck and was lucky to escape relative-ly unhurt. After the incident he twittered no one was to blame and he was happy he had such a strong recce car. He also promised to be back the next day for the second day of the recce. And as promised he was, but both teammates soon found out the impact had left some bruises,

that even under recce speeds the pain proved to be too distractive for racing speeds, especially if you intend to defend your fourth place in the championship. Much to their regret they had to stop. This was bad news for Østberg, but good news for Stéphane Lefebvre. He was in Australia just for the recce, but now was drafted by his team principal to sit behind the wheel of Øst-berg’s car. Though he’d never competed in Aus-tralia before, he did not have to think very long: “It’s a great shame for Mads, but it’s an excellent chance for me!”. He had to lend Paul Nagle’s overalls and Mads Østberg’s helmet because there had been no need for him to bring his own gear. After some a short discussion the organ-izers accepted him as a competitor and the Cit-roën camp was complete again.

Shakedown Scare

At the first corner of his first shakedown run, Ogi-er had a big scare. “I went into an open hairpin a bit to slow. Therefore I touched the inside bank of the corner. It threw my Polo on two wheels, but luckily I could steer in the other direction so the car was on its four wheels again. “It would not have mattered very much if we would have rolled because we were not driving that fast. But I like to bring back my car to service undamaged!” It did not slow him down however as he managed to drive the fastest time in shakedown closely fol-lowed by Mikkelsen, Latvala, Meeke and Neu-ville.

It all almost ended for Ogier on the first corner of shakedown where he nearly rolled. Bummer for Ostberg, opportunity for Lefebvre. The young Frenchman replaced Ostberg after he suffered his injury.


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Road cleaning

Australia probably is one of the hard-est rallies to be first on the road. The top layer of the Australian stages varies from loose gravel to very fine reddish sand. Consequently grip lev-els often change and are at best un-predictable. Being first on the road means, here more than elsewhere, that you have to clean the road. The competition chasing you is thereby favoured as the cleaner line means faster times for them. Though if we may believe Kris Meeke driving fur-ther back ahs it’s disadvantages too. “Driving flat out in sixth and not being able to see further than the end of your bonnet is quite a challenge.” However Hyundai’s Sordo made perfect use of his lower down starting position. “I had a perfect run,” said Sordo en-thusiastically, he was probably right as he won the first three stages and consequently was leading the rally. Hayden Paddon, who replaced Sordo in the Hyundai main team, was next on the leaderboard. Meeke on a mis-sion took over the lead on stage four. He could fend off Latvala until the last stage of the day when the charging Finn passed him. The difference be-tween the two was just two seconds, so no time to relax yet. Especially as Ogier clawed back during the after-noon passes of the Friday loop. He was just 4.6 seconds behind in third.

The battle for the championship

Ogier has to finish in front of Latvala to be certain of his third championship. If he is second behind Latvala he just needs one PowerStage bonus point to also make him the champ again. So the heat is still on. But Ogier, still per-forming road-sweeping duties, initially can just sit and look at the battle be-tween Latvala and Meeke. Quite early in the day Meeke in a very strong form passes Latvala again. But he doesn’t succeed in really widening the gap. Then on the last stage it becomes clear again that being first on the road is not always a disadvantage. The Austral-ian organizers reintroduced the night stage. Some years ago this caused quite a few problems in Greece when the hanging dust transformed into white walls when the strong beams coming from the light pods hit them. Visibility was none.

Night stage Australian style

In Australia the organizers thought to have found a solution. A five-minute gap between each competi-tor should give the dust the time to settle. However in practice this did not work. Let’s look at the following facts. Lefebvre leading the field as he was in Rally2 improved his time in comparison to his earlier pass by 5,5 seconds.


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Ogier, next on the road, also improved his time if only by 2 seconds. Latvala won some time on Ogier in the first section, but in the second section of the stage, where the dust hung under the treeshe lost time and was 0.7 sec-onds slower than Ogier. But still 0.7 seconds faster than his first run on the stage. However he was the last one to improve his time, all the others were slower than the first run when it was still light. Complaints about the hang-ing dust grew louder and louder, until Meeke reached the finish, he preferred to be remain silent although steam was coming out of his ears… he was defi-nitely not happy. Apart from suffering from the dust he had an extra prob-lem because Elfyn Evans who stared before him went off the road and got stuck for some 30 seconds. So when he got going again the distance be-tween him and the following Meeke was just over four minutes instead of five. His seat being in jeopardy be-cause of his fairly poor middle season performances could be a lot safer if he scores a good result here. But he is a full second slower than on the first run and now slips behind Ogier by a tiny margin of 0.3 seconds. Latvala at 2.5 seconds is third and Mikkelsen a bit further away is in fourth. An exciting finale lies ahead.

Ogier on top

On the last day another five stages have to be tackled over a total dis-tance of 70 kilometres. That seems to be enough space to do something for the competition. Well eh not if the main

opponent is called Sebastien Ogier. Ogier relieved from road sweeping duties and with a third championship in the distance is utterly unbeatable and he proves that by winning all the remaining stages, the bonus points in the PowerStage, the rally and as an added bonus the championship! For the third year running no one could stop him. And if we look at his sea-son again we recognize a pattern. He loses in the morning loop, comes back in the afternoon, repeats that the next day and by then he is usually in strik-ing distance to beat the competition. This was again the case in Australia. And at the end of the rally he implic-itly agreed with the ‘authorities’ he so vehemently disagreed with. More perhaps than earlier years he really had to fight for every victory. And for a real sportsman a hard fought victory is worth far more than a walk over. We therefore heard him say several times this year “this was perhaps the best victory in my career.” And we heard it again in Australia: “The best ever!”

Latvala already knew he wouldn’t be champion this year, but he was happy with his second place. His team was equally happy because Volkswagen Motorsport also reached it’s third World Championship title. Meeke was reason-ably happy too. “This was the best pos-sible result. They were simply too fast or me! That might in the end be true but we definitely like to have him back next year. At this moment he seems to be one of the very few to be able to make live at least a little hard for Volkswagen!

Coates Hire Rally Australia / Round-up

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Round-up

Volkswagen World Rallyteam M-Sport World Rally TeamWhat can you say about a team

that is winning everything possible? Are they spoiling the champion-ship? No definitely not! They pro-vide a goal for all the other teams to focus on. Unfortunately for the other teams VW has the best car and driving in it are three of the most talented drivers in the WRC of today, one of them being the strongest driver by far. The way he masters the game is an asset to the championship. So we fully mean it when we say Congratulations Seb!

If we look at the individual perfor-mances of the drivers in Australia, we see that Latvala was very eager to win and trying very hard but by Saturday evening he gave up hope and though he promised that he would attack, he soon found out that the risk of losing his second place were higher than a fight for an almost impossible win could jus-

tify. Mikkelsen is quite sure of his third place in the championship be-cause all points he would win here would widen the gap between him and Mads Østberg as his fellow countryman was unable to com-pete. Stiil he fought for what he is worth. But when he was given a ten second time penalty for late arrival at a time check he couldn’t bridge the gap anymore although he came near as his efforts were stopped 5.9 seconds form Kris Meeke.

For Ogier there was no time to celebrate his third championship. Straight after the press confer-ence he as well as co-driver Julien Ingrassia and team principal Jost Capito had to go to Sydney to fly back to Frankfurt via Dubai for a Volkswagen group meeting at the Frankfurt Motor show. So celebra-tions had to take place in the cock-tail bar of the long haul airplane.

For M-Sport again it was not a rally to write home about. Tanak did show his potential and kept his distance from the likes of Neuville and given the experience of Tanak in Oz, he did not do bad but sixth place is not what they were hoping for. Elfyn Evans did not get his confidence during this rally.

His off on the Saturday night stage was an example of that. His ninth place at least brings him some points, but as he said himself: we have to get back to the office and see what went wrong so that we never have to endure a rally like this anymore.

Coates Hire Rally Australia / Round-up

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Hyundai choose to select (some-what) local Hayden Paddon over Dani Sordo as the second driver in their main team. Although Sordo was quite fast in the early stages, the decision proved to be the right one. Paddon was the best Hyun-dai driver and finished fifth. To reach that position he had to fight off Thierry Neuville who still is not up to his usual self. He often said he had the feeling he drove well, but the stage times not always re-flected those ideas. Still it was a reasonably fruitful appearance in

Australia as he could come a bit closer to Mads Østberg. The gap now is only four points, but when the Norwegian is back he is not easily going to surrender to the lead Hyundai driver. After some troubles Dani Sordo brought home the third i20 in eighth place. He gets his chance again in France and Spain on his beloved tarmac stages.

The results of Paddon and Neu-ville kept the team in second spot for the constructor’s title.

It did not start well for the French team. Mads Østberg out before he even started and thus being unable to defend his fourth place in the championship. But his re-placement was fastly found and Stéphane Lefebvre had to re ar-range his expectations of his Aus-tralian presence. From getting the flavour of the Australian stages by doing the recce he had to find an overall and Helmet to actually compete. He managed to do that and did a good job. On the first day there was a an off that broke a wishbone in his DS3, but with Rally2 he did what could reason-ably be expected from him. He

steadily improved his times and made it to the finish.Kris Meek also did what he had to do. He impressed friend and foe by leading the rally for a con-siderable amount of time. Latvala passed him but he came back only to be overtaken again. But in the end he succeeded in pre-venting another Volkswagen 1, 2, 3 by claiming the last step on the podium. “This is the best I could do,” he said somewhat de-flated. But his performance must be a step in the right direction for securing his seat in the Citroen team.

Citroen Total Abu Dhabi WRTHyundai Shell World Rally Team

Coates Hire Rally Australia / Results

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1. Ogier/ Ingrassia VW Polo R WRC 2h 59m 16.42. Latvala/ Anttila VW Polo R WRC + 12.33. Meeke/Nagle Citroën D S3 WRC + 32.6 4. Mikkelsen/ Fløene VW Polo R WRC + 38.55. Paddon/ Kennard Hyundai i20 WRC + 55.16. Tänak/Mõlder Ford Fiësta RS WRC + 1m 38.07. Neuville/Gilsoul Hyundai i20 WRC + 2m 08.38. Sordo/Martí Hyundai i20 WRC + 2m 15.29. Evans/Barritt Ford Fiësta RS WRC + 4m 33.710. Al-Attiyah/Baumel Ford Fiësta RS RRC + 11m 46.5

2015 FIA WRCManufacturers’ Standings

1. Volkswagen Motorsport 3652. Hyundai Motorsport 1773. Citroën Total Abu Dhabi WRT 1644. M-Sport 1485. Volkswagen Motorsport II 766. Hyundai Motorsport N 497. Jipocar Czech National Team 658. FWRT 9

Coates Hire Rally Australia / Standings

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2015 FIA WRCDrivers’ Standings1. Sébastien Ogier 2352. Jari-Matti Latvala 1343. Andreas Mikkelsen 1114. Mads Østberg 905. Thierry Neuville 866. Kris Meeke 717. Elfyn Evans 638. Ott Tänak 629. Hayden Paddon 5610. Dani Sordo 56

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Interview / Molly Taylor

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The big leap interview with molly taylor

Molly TaylorCurrently 2nd in Australian Rally Championship

It is incredibly difficult to make it big in the world of rallying. Merely learning the sport requires at least some sort of funding and the going gets even tougher when you want to challenge in one of the junior support series. From this point on, rallying becomes just as much about self-promotion as it is about driving. Finding the funding to pay for the hefty price tags attached to competing in these series is at least as tricky as getting through the stages. Getting noticed by the top teams is a completely different matter and then trying to secure one of the, maybe ten, paid seats of the factory teams is next to impossible. Try doing that if you’re not from Europe where most of the sport is focused but from the other side of the world, and you’ve got yourself a mountain to climb.

Bring in ‘expert-mountaineer’ Molly Taylor. The 27-year old Aussie has already logged an impressive amount of Air Miles by flying back and forth between Europe and Australia and after several stints in European series is currently second in the East Coast Bullbars Australian Rally Championship. We caught up with Molly to get to know here a little bet-ter and find out how she is trying to make a name for herself in the world of rallying.

Q: You are now a successful rally driver, current-ly second in the Australian Rally Championship, but first let’s go back in time a bit. How did you first get in to rallying?

A: My family in Australia is quite involved in rally-ing. My grandfather used to drive and my mum and father used to compete as well. My mum still competes and she is actually a four time Austral-ian champion co-driver. She was involved with one of the factory teams here in Australia for a few years as a co-driver and manager of the team. So I’ve basically grown up around rallying and I guess it has always been in my blood.

Q: And how did you get into your first car then?

A: Growing up, I never thought that I would get involved with rallying myself actually; I used to just watch the rallies. When I got my license for the road though my father was running a rally school and he wanted me to go and drive in the school, so that I could learn techniques to make me a safer driver on the road. But then as soon as I experienced rally driving for myself I fell in love with it and I’ve been driving ever since.

“As soon as I experienced rally driving for myself I fell in love with it andI’ve been driving ever since”

Words: Steven van Veenendaal

Images: PR


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Q; You have joined some de-velopment programs since then to help you move up the ranks.

A: Yes I competed in Australia for a couple of years and then in 2009 I moved over to the UK to compete in the British Rally Championship to try and pro-gress my career and also to benchmark myself against the other top young drivers. As a result I was selected for the shootout for the Pirelli Star Driv-er Program and I won a place in the WRC Academy, which was really a big stepping-stone for me. It took me from competing in national events to the WRC, which was an awesome expe-rience and has led to many op-portunities since then.

Q: So those programs where important for you to develop as a driver?

A: Definitely! When I moved to England I had absolutely no money and was preparing the car myself at somebody’s workshop. I was really doing everything on a shoestring budget. I had support from some sponsors in Australia, which was fan-tastic but rallying is so expensive that it’s very difficult to find all the money to compete in a proper way. So to go from competing in national events without much money, to having six rallies in the WRC Academy confirmed at the start of the year was absolutely incredible. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to make the jump into the WRC without some-thing like that program.

Q: You mentioned that rallying is very expensive. Can you tell us about the sort of things that you do to find the budget?

A: I work multiple jobs in between the rallies to have money to pay for my regular living expenses and anything left over goes towards my ral-lying. . The rest of my time is spent finding and managing the sponsors. I’m lucky to have some great support but it is a lot of work and keeps me very busy. It’s not easy to find the budget and it’s all about working with partners to make sure I give value back to them. Because at the end of the day, you are only rallying because you are adding value to some-one’s brand or business. You have to realize that it’s more about devel-oping those relationships in between the events, to create the business- and a brand exposure and give value back to people that put money into you. It’s much more of a business than driving at the moment. To actually get to the rally and sit in the car is almost the smallest part of it.


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Q: When you say give value back to them, is that value mainly for them when you compete and you display their brand on your car or do you also do a lot of other promotional activities?

A: Certainly branding is a part of it and here in Australia our national championship is shown on television so that sort of branding is defi-nitely important to businesses. But I think, in today’s world, it’s much more than just a sticker on the car. It’s more about working individually with the companies to create business-to-business relations between the sponsors or providing corporate hospitality or commercial incen-tives or other benefits specific to each company. I think the branding complements that but it’s more about finding a way to increase their business in a more direct way rather than just having their brand on the car somewhere.

Q: As you are from Australia and rallying, perhaps from my European perspective, is mainly focused on Europe, does that make it more dif-ficult for you to attract sponsorship?

A: Yes unfortunately that is the case. It’s also the reason I moved to

Europe in 2009, as I wanted to compete where the sport is bigger. But rallying is certainly growing in Australia and I think we have a fantastic championship here as well. But it is difficult, particularly to compete in Europe with sponsors from Australia. It is a lot easier to give value when you’re competing in Australia. This year I’m actually having a lot more success with building relationships with my partners here in Australia and I’m really enjoying it. I think it will help in the future to go back and compete in Europe. But certainly being this far away is a challenge, not just with regard to sponsorship. When you compete in Australia you have your entire sup-port network around you and that’s something you don’t have when you are living and competing in Europe. You’ are completely on your own and everything you need to make an event happen, all the resources and all the equipment, it all needs to come from an external source. It’s not your friend with a trailer from across the road or your friends coming and helping to service for you; all that sort of stuff we do when we com-pete in Australia, when you go over to Europe your friends and family are not there to help, so you have to rely on a team to do it for you and that costs a lot of money. It’s fantastic but it is expensive and difficult for someone from the other side of the world.


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Q: I understand. How long did you live in Europe actually?

A: I went over there in 2009 and then I stayed pretty much until 2013. I lived in the UK for the first couple of years and I worked at M-Sport. I then spent a couple of years based in Italy and trav-elling backwards and forwards quite a lot.

Q: Now another thing, what’s it like as a female in a male oriented sport? It makes you stand out from the crowd a bit; does it help you in any way?

A: I get asked that a lot and it’s some-thing that I don’t really think about much to be honest. Growing up my mum was rallying as a professional in Australia so it was my dad who was making our school lunches and he stayed home with us when my mum was away com-peting. So I kind of grew up consider-ing that to be normal and I never really thought it was anything different, which I think is a nice thing growing up. But I do believe it’s all about the job you are doing and if you’re being a professional and treating rallying professionally then people will respect the job that you are doing. The priority is always that the performance is good enough, if you’re not fast enough than nothing else really matters. So sure, it can be an advan-tage being a female in some respects, for example from a sponsorship point of view, because you are a point of dif-ference. But I think the most important

thing is that you can prove yourself, that you can do the job, you can’t turn any-thing else unless you get the basics. So that’s always been my priority, I make sure I can do the job first before I try to go around talking about being a female or anything like that. In the end we are all doing the same jobs. That’s one of the greatest things about rallying; it’s always unique for anybody to get there so I think people can appreciate what you’re doing whether you are male or female.

Q: What are your plans for this year and the following years, what’s coming up?

A: We have two rounds of the Austral-ian Championship left. We were lead-ing the last round until we hit mechani-cal issues but we are currently second in the championship and the goal is to win the championship this year. So we’ve got a big fight on our hands now in the next two rounds. Next year the regulations in the Australian Champi-onship are changing. At the moment it’s front wheel drive in the main cate-gory, similar to what they did in the Brit-ish Championship, but next year they’ll open it up to allow four wheel drive R5 cars and Super 2000 cars. So I would really like to get into a four-wheel drive next year and get more experience in a four-wheel drive so I can come to Euro-pean events in a four-wheel drive too. That’s my ultimate goal but we’ll try and win the championship first!

Interview / Martin Prokop

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Q: So for now the focus is on Australia, do you have any plans to come to Europe again?

A: Yes at the moment the focus for this year is certainly on the championship. I think if I can build a good profile here in Australia and have some re-ally good results here in Australia that would help build my assets back in Europe. So that is the first step, to try and get some good and consistent re-sults on the board. The past few years have been difficult because I haven’t done as many rallies as I would like to and I haven’t been able to link up a full championship, rather some events here or there. So it’s important to get a solid season and time in the car in and take that experience and if we can keep getting good results here in Australia and keep building on our base and our team, then see if we can do some more events in Europe. I think that’s the most logical step.

Q: Last year, I saw you in France doing Rally Ra-dio and you’ll be the gravel crew for Kevin Ab-bring on some events. Is it important to be around the WRC and be seen?

A: Yes certainly, even though I haven’t been able to compete yet in the WRC this year. I was hop-ing to do Finland this year but that unfortunately didn’t happen. But still to be there and be involved is definitely good experience for me. It is also re-ally important to stay in that scene and keep hav-ing those contacts and a network within the com-munity. You have to be available for whenever opportunities do come up, you want to be in the front of mind as a driver that is still competitive and still very much involved in the scene, so it’s definitely important to be around in some shape or form. When there is an opportunity I’m there and I’m ready.

“When there is an opportunity,I’m there and I’m ready”

Interview / Oliver Ciesla

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wrc plans Oliver Ciesla

Oliver CieslaWRC Promotor

Oliver Ciesla is the managing director of WRC Promoter, the company responsible for promot-ing the WRC.

Like every year around this time, plans are made for the upcoming season so there is a lot to talk about (new regulations for 2017, a new calendar for 2016, etc.) with director of WRC Promoter, Oliver Ciesla. As chief executive of the promoter he can shed some light on the ins and outs of the upcoming changes. Although there are various subjects to which his response will be: “I’m is not in the position to confirm that yet” there is also a lot he can talk about. We spoke with Oliver in the courtyard of the rally HQ hotel in the middle of Trier, where the ADAC Rallye Deutschland had just started.

“Did you see the start in Trier yesterday?” His enthusiasm was clear when he asked the ques-tion. Although we had to admit we did, he con-tinued with the same enthusiasm. “There were enormous crowds and it shows that rallying re-ally lives. It’s also an example of what we want: bring rallying to the people. I think it is fair to say with the help and effort of the organizers we did succeed in improving that. The start in Trier is an example and also the street stage in Guanajua-to, just to mention another one. I really enjoyed it seeing all these enthusiastic people.”

It’s always good to see someone in this level of management being so excited about the sport. Still we intend to ask some things that have been discussed on al kinds of levels. Manufacturers, drivers, sponsors and last but not least the fans. The first topic is the change in regulation for 2017. What we’ve seen up to now is an increase in power, a decrease in weight and some chang-es in the size of the body that make changes in aerodynamics possible. Looks good on paper, but how did these changes actually come about?“As you know we did a research with the fans on WRC.COM. We had a big response and after analysing the data the outcome was that three areas are very very important for the fans with re-

gards to their interest in the WRC. First they want to have a hero, a star driver they can relate to. Secondly we have to look at the competition for-mat, the drama in the fight for the podium, who will be winning so this is spirit of the competition. Last but not least there is the excitement of the car.”

Achievements“As you can see, if you have been following us the last few years, we have touched all three ar-eas. We had long discussions last year about the change of regulations and changing the in-crease in the unpredictability of the outcome. So we talked about the changing starting orders, about questioning the communication between teams and drivers during the rally and so on. I think it is fair to say that, quite something has been achieved in comparison to last year if you look at the PowerStage. They were really excit-ing; there were fights for the third place or the first place or just for points. It really led exactly to what we wanted to achieve. The same goes for the cars in the discussions with the manufactur-ers; we apparently wished to consider what can be done to make the cars more distinct and how can they look more powerful, within the budget.

“We want to bring rallying to the people.”


Images: Bas Romeny, Harry van Veenendaal, PR


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The carsThere was no imminent need to really increase the power or to really increase the aerodynam-ics. This was not our objective, there was no need for that. What we disdwas slightly modify the rules so that the manufacturers could build more distinct make it look more different from the other cars and how can they look more exciting, more powerful. So we gave the opportunity for a slightly wider and longer car to modify the shape and to give the possi-bility to work on the wings and the lights and we slightly increased the horsepower and the weight. The main objective is not to go faster but to see the cars more drifting if possible. So these were are objectives and we are very pleased that both the FIA and the manufacturers agreed with these developments and I’m really curi-ous to see the 2017 cars.

While looking at the regulation changes we wonder if five centi-metres can really change some-thing so that the cars look differ-ent from each other. How did you come to this decision?

I don’t want to manage expecta-tions here but this is under con-sideration for the whole picture;

including aspects like costs, regulations, including Toyota to come. They all have basic cars they are working on and we did not basically force them to make such significant changes that they would have to move to other models. So you always can say this is a compromise, you could have done more, more extents more power and so on, but this was not our intention for 2017. Again looking down at what we wanted to achieve, we did a step in the right direction. In another few years and other changes to come we will see.

Why did you up the power to 380? Why not 400 or..

This is not so much where the promoter needs to get involved. This is the feedback based on what the manufacturers and the technical people competent col-leagues say. It’s the frame we can easily do and in the end it’s a mix between objectives, cost and regulations. They came with this proposal and for us that doesn’t make a significant difference and neither for the fans, if the car is 10, 15 or even 20 HP more, it’s just the result of technical analy-sis. As I said, this was following the input of the manufacturers.

Above: An artist impression of what the new regulations could make the next generation WRC’s look. Wider bodies, bigger wings and more power.

Below: Toyota will return to the WRC in 2017.


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SafetyWe’ve been talking to some drivers and they seemed to have changed their minds about these changes. They are a bit concerned about safety. How do you think about safe-ty and are any changes needed?

It is in particular due to the fact that we look at safety that the changes are done in this moderate manner and people have been asking about group B cars. There is a reason we don’t have Group B cars anymore and there is no intention to go back to where we come from it’s a mod-erate development in an intelligent manner considering a compromise between costs, safety and what you want to achieve. Safety plays a strong element in that entire development and also the changes foresee that the side impact protection and the likes form part of the new regulations So safe-ty aspects in relation tot the 2017 regulations will be stronger again. That is about the cars and the safety for the drivers what about the spec-tators? The cars will be going faster.

I don’t know if the cars will be go-ing faster we’ll have to see if this increase in power is directly trans-lated into speed, But the security of spectators is a permanent issue that we have in our conversations with, in particular the FIA, the or-ganizers and ourselves. It’s clear that this is more the responsibility of

the governing body and the federa-tions. But whatever we do security is part of our obvious concerns and the permanent safety delegate that is monitoring the events. The FIA will as I understand play a more ac-tive role in managing safety on site, with every event. It’s a permanent issue, permanent on our radar. And it is correct that this is the case as we really really have to avoid that dramatic incidents lead to conse-quences that we all don’t want to have. Not for the spectators not for the families and not for the sports. It’s an over ruling issue for whatever we do.

The changes were for the WRC category are there any changes planned for WRC2 and 3?

Also the support series including the juniors, including the new GT category .that has been introduced is an issue that we permanently monitor and see how that develops. I can show you the number of en-tries in WRC increased and it really picked up, so we are quite pleased. So we are happy with these devel-opments. We are aware we could do more for those support catego-ries and we are discussing this with the teams and the FIA. But there will be no significant change for these categories in 2017 that I would be in the position to announce today.

We recently interviewed Martin Prokop and he would like to have a privateer cup. So that more pri-vateers can enter the champion-ship wit a real WRC car.

It’s an idea that we very much have on our agenda and that we pur-sue having a cup that the private competitors could compete in. But we need a commercial part-ner who wants to pay so that we can reward the drivers with a cup and a financial reward. We are looking for this partner who wants to connect his name to this cup. Once we have this partner we are happy to introduce this concept. We are talking to partners but at this moment we are not going into detail until we found a partner. It will not be rocket science to im-plement the special rules for this competition. But at this moment we have more pressing matters on our agenda.

The calendar

You presented a preliminary cal-endar and there is quite a bit of speculation because some events were not on this on this list. What is the status of these events?

First of all: there is no preliminary calendar there is number of con-firmed events that the promoter would be ready to propose for a calendar. But nothing has been

decided yet about the calendar. Our communication was done to provide planning safety for these events. The rallies are quite posi-tive. Of course Mexico and Swe-den are pleased to know it now and not in October. This is the reason we did that, irrespectively the entire final calendar that will be proposed from the promoter to the FIA. It will be proposed in the course of September and will then go through the WRC com-mission and to the WMSC for final approval as in all the last years and that is the process. This means we had some agreements with organizers and we told the FIA we have these agreements, so they could be proposed. For others we still have some months to go to come to a conclusion. Since the communication, negoti-ations have continued. I am confi-dent that we will be in the position to propose GB for the calendar I make no secret of that. Then about Germany it is a good event and there is no particular reason we should not want to include them in the calendar. Germany is one of the five top five markets that form the core of the cham-pionship and they host a strong well organised event in the region that allows many fans to attend we are not questioning this event. We are having very positive talks with ADAC to be able to propose them in 2016 that is my intention at least.


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If you say Germany allows many fans to attend, what then do you think about Corsica and Sardinia?

If you talk about Sardinia and Corsi-ca and with all due respect to each event organizer that manages to or-ganize a WRC event on a high level, which is really a complex and chal-lenging task and they are all doing this very well and have our respect, but if you had the challenge to start a new WRC calendar from scratch with the intention that is really global or touches most of the continents at least and which is also easily spread with regards to time I think you would your proposal would not consider two events on Mediterranean islands. Essentially one of the intentions of the championship is growth and growth means bring the rally to more people.

It’s a declared objective of the WRC to be active in the five core markets in Europe which means Germany, England, Spain Italy and France, for the reason that strong manufacturer brands that work in the WRC get in contact with as many potential fans in those economically im-portant markets. To reach that the rallies must be where the fans are. The events lose their im-portance if exactly the access to the important fan groups is not given anymore.

Then it is the job of the promoter to see are there alternatives where these objectives can be achieved or are new priorities growing for the importance of the championship and the poten-tial for manufacturers. It’s not a secret that at

the moment car markets like Russia, Brazil. India China are something that are very important for manufacturers. We have four out of the five top manufacturers (consider Toyota involved) so for these important stakeholders we have to make the championship as attractive as possible. And the calendar considerations must reflect that.

Does this mean you will be proposing new event for 2016?

It’s to early to confirm that today but it’s my job to work exactly on that and it s not a secret that

China is one of the priorities on this list. There is a very strong desire from manufacturer teams to go there.

Citroën said they would be leaving the champi-onship if WRC were not going to China…

That is not only the position of Citroën, the desire to come to China is clearly expressed by Hyun-dai, Volkswagen and Citroën. And this is clearly expressed by management level beyond the sporting directors.


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Last year you told us you are working on a special event in China is that still the case or are you considering other events?

No, no we have been working on it for more than a year or almost two years if you also consider the efforts that the FIA put into to identify sports in China. Of course we’ve seen opportunities on Chinese ground in the past an we narrowed it down to a location some 60-80 kilometres to the north of Beijing. Part of the consideration has been that this loca-tion is easily accessible. It will very likely be a tarmac event.

Was there already a test rally there?

We had the opportunity of observing an event that serves exactly to this purpose and we are quite confident that the competence of the organ-izers ticks the box.

Earlier you said the calendar would have a maximum of 13 events. If China comes in, would another rally drop out?

That is a probable scenario…

Do you have any rally in mind?

Yes…[grins]

But you’re probably not going to say which one?

No.[laughs]

Now on a completely different subject. How is WRC+ developing?

We are pleased, of course things can always go faster and better and more but the bottom line is it develops well, there is a continuous growth and it’s always significant if more people are subscribing then walking away from it so we are pleased and continually working to improve. We launched it in Finland last year s the baby is a bit more than a year old, and we are quite pleased for hat it brings to the fans. But also what it brings to the people who are involved in the rally on site. And as you may have seen we invested in another step that brings the very app that brings WRC+ into each living room in HD on a big screen now if you

have a smart tv. We started this with Amazon TV we will also include other smart tv providers. So it’s easy now for fans to watch WRC TV. This is a logical next step and we are curious to see how it picks up. The po-tential is huge. Every smart TV in the future theoretically could use this. They don’t have to go look for it and download it, we bring it to the in the living room. And that is the important contribution that we as a promoter try to do, make it easier for the fans and to those that do not yet, now that they will be fans tomorrow.

Are there any other changes that are on the agenda?

The biggest next thing that we have on the agenda will be the launch of WRC5 the new game that will be published in October. And we wish to initiate a sports competition that goes through the entire season next year world wide, a virtual world championship for the fans and we are now thinking of ways how to integrate this virtual competition also at the events. It’s a fantastic new way for us to entertaining rallyfans. And we are looking forward to seeing the results. And the competition starts with the Rallye Monte Carlo next year.

Trying to get Ciesla to give a hint about possible additions and removals of rallies from the championship in 2016.... Not going to happen.


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The state of the WRC

After almost two years of being a WRC promoter what can you say about the state of the WRC?

Yesterday we had a meeting with all stakehold-ers in the WRC and this was exactly the ques-tion we wanted to answer to them. Overall it was quite a positive story. It is not our style to keep on telling everyone how good we are but still a lot has been achieved in al kinds of fields. Most of this we have been discussing earlier in this interview, but perhaps the best result is that everyone concerned is happy to be part of the WRC family. The WRC brand is very strong and being part of that brand makes your own brand stronger. It took a while before everyone under-stood and recognized the fact this was true, but yesterday most people were quite happy with what we achieved. Let me give you some facts.

TV coverage: We now have the second big-gest audience after formula one, in all mot-orsport broad-casts. In the United States Nascar is some-times near, but it’s only in the US and not all year so globally speaking we are

far more important. We of course introduced the WRC+ platform and this makes accessibility to the WRC footage easier.

EventsMore events knock on my door than I can di-gest. I cannot do more than 13 events, not in the next two years I cannot afford it and at the end of the day the teams don’t want it. I could ask my shareholders and tell them give me half a million more and then I could do fourteen, but Malcolm (Wilson, M-Sport principal, ed.) doesn’t want that, but nor would Hyundai, Cit-roen or Volkswagen. If we would introduce extra events, that would mean events outside of Eu-rope. Which logistically makes it more compli-cated and thus more expensive. We even might need another overseas kit. So for now let’s not

go beyond 13. But me as a promoter I’m very pleased. We could easily do 16or 17 on a good level It’s a compliment for the championship that people want to host it.

But as a brand we’ve grown so much that other want to be in and recognize the fact that being in the WRC is a good thing. And rather than hav-ing a high profile for their own event they realize being part of the WRC gives them a more impor-tant return of investment.

Bring WRC closer to the people I can be very happy of I see the huge crowds that visit for example the ceremonial start at Por-ta Nigra here, or the SuperSpecial in the streets Juanajuato. The Fafe sprint was successful, but it’s even more successful now it’s under my roof.

We already dis-cussed the PowerStage, it brought us everything we wished for and predicted. So rather than only the TV audi-ence we also increased the actual audi-ences on site by fifty percent. Which is an in-centive for lo-cal sponsors, which is good for the local or-ganizer. Anoth-er box ticked!


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CooperationPerhaps the most important achievement is the fact we now have a good relationship based on trust. In the first year it was: “Hey who are these new guys?” With some the discussions have been a bit longer, but now being in our third year, with very few exceptions most of them really join in and start believing in it, because they see it works. All parties, manufacturers, event organizers and the media, the FIA etcetera recognized being together makes us all stronger. All changes are done after careful consultation of interested parties and this has been important for com-ing where we are now. Don’t get me wrong I don’t say ‘hey we are the best’ we achieved that and that; we achieved nothing but the things that we wanted to achieve and the measurements that we initiated to going into that direction proved to be right, proved to be initiating a positive trend, let’s keep on following this trend!

Are there any things you still would like to improve?

One thing that is at the top of our list is the service area. What can we bring the spectators on site? Almost all peo-ple visiting a rally come to the service park. But we let them go again just like that. There are all kinds of chances there, is the servicepark in the right location, are the cars often enough in the servicepark? Is there enough service in the servicepark? When is the service in the servicepark? If the cars are not in the servicepark, what else can you do in the meantime? 750.00 to 800.000 people that visit a rally come to the servicepark and we let them go whereas they could eat more, drink more, buy more shirts There is a lot we can do and we would be ignorant not to do it, because the fans are already here. We will start a task force that can help the organizers improve that.

When are you satisfied as a promoter?

From a purely commercial perspective the overall objec-tive of the investors that I’m working for, the Sportsman Media Group and Red Bull Mediahouse is to get a strong championship that allows the promoter to get a return on investment a positive financial return of investment. But we do not pursue this objective blindly and ignorant. So the frame that we set is that we are happy with positive things that happen like I said earlier the Porta Nigra and the Gua-najuato stage where in both cases the WRC is providing a great show and I could go on giving you examples, there is a lot of satisfying moments in this job if you seen you developed an idea that actually proves to work. Still on the longer term the overall objective of the promoter as a com-pany is to take advantage of positive developments in the WRC by making our business case a positive one.

Note from the editorSince the interview things have happened. The most impor-tant one was the proposal of a calendar to the Rally Com-mission. The proposal was delayed because there was no decision yet about the introduction of a Chinese round in the championship. The Beijing Huairou Rally, which is con-sidered to be the China round in the 2016 championship was held in August and there were some reports that in-dicated some safety issues. Now the presentation of the calendar has been postponed, as Oliver Ciesla, informed us, to further investigate these reports. Still a proposal will be ready for ratification by the World Motorsport Council to be held on September 30th at FIA HQ in Paris.

Barum Czech Rally Zlin / Overview

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Based in: Zlin

Date: 28-30/08/15


Shortest stage: Zlutava, 8.93 km

Longest stage: Trojak, 23.01 km


Surface: Tarmac

barum czech rally zlin

Image: FIA ERC

Barum Czech Rally Zlin / Review

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homecomingParty

The Barum Rally is Skoda’s annual homecoming party. Af-ter racking up five consecutive wins since 2009, the Czech was finally dethroned last year by Vaclav Pech. With the new R5 edition of the Fabia at the start for the first time, Skoda took no chances. Local ace Jan Kopecky returned to the ERC for them, with one goal only, to win.

Words: Steven van Veenendaal

Images: FIA ERC


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ContendersAs preparation for the Barum Rally, Kopecky went to Germany to compete in the ADAC Rallye Deutschland WRC event and duly won the WRC 2 class. If anything, Kopecky looked ready for the challenge. In the Czech Republic he would find different foes on his quest to victory howev-er. The ERC title titans Kajetanowicz and Breen were around as the main contenders but Vaclav Pech won last year, so why not again this year? Dark horse Lukyanuk has shown tremendous pace this year and switched back to the Fiesta R5 after claiming top honours in Estonia in a Mit-subishi.

Tough startThis year’s Barum Rally got of to a tremendously tough start, especially for the front-runners. The opening stage of the rally takes the competitors

smack through the middle of Zlin and the recce for the stage was only allowed on the Thursday evening before the rally at around midnight. Af-ter a short night the competitors were back in the thick of things at 7.30 AM the following morn-ing for the free practice of the qualifying stage. It was directly followed by the actual qualifying stage itself after which the teams were expected for several promotional activities like autograph sessions. Early in the evening the ceremonial start took place before the crews could finally head to the start of the first stage. To provide some extra excitement for the fans, the opening stage ran in reverse order so the front-runners would run in complete darkness.

Things didn’t go according to plan though on the opening stage. With about twenty cars to go sud-denly an ambulance appeared on the stage, not because a car had crashed but to assist one of

the spectators. Consequently (and understand-ably) the stage was halted for nearly an hour be-fore the final teams got to join the action. It meant that the top teams didn’t get to start the stage until after midnight. On Saturday morning the action resumed at 8 AM so it was another short night for the crews. The first full day of competi-tion was a tough one again too which didn’t see the first crews return to the service park untill around 7.45 PM.

Pech draws first bloodIn the somewhat chaotic start of the rally Vaclav Pech seized the opportunity to snatch an early lead. He was 3.6 seconds faster than Jan Ko-pecky with Kostka in third ahead of Breen and Kajetanowicz.

The opening night stage through the streets of Zlin is a fan favorite as they flock to it in thousands.

Last year’s winner, Vaclav Pech was back to defend his crown.


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Not my eventRobert Consani had already attempt-ed the Barum Rally at five previous occasions but never made it to the fin-ish of the event. Mechanical woes and some off-road excursions had always prevented him from reaching the end causing some concern ahead of this year’s run. “This isn’t really my event to be honest, but we look to at least reach the finish this year” he stated before the end. Unfortunately for him it wasn’t to be again. Consani’s rally didn’t last much longer than a few kilometers when he crashed heavily on the first stage on Saturday morn-ing. The footage of his spectacular off went around the world, but it wasn’t the way in which Consani would have liked to. Another disappointment then and a miserable 0 for 6 finish record at the Barum for the Frenchman.

Local knowledgeKopecky and Pech quickly proved that it is hard to beat local knowledge at the Czech event. The two blitzed the timesheets and quickly ran away from the rest of the field. Not even Ka-jetanowicz and Breen could pose any serious challenge. Then again, they didn’t really have to. Their main focus is on the ERC championship meaning

they were mainly looking at each other rather than gunning for outright victo-ry. A thrilling battle appeared to unfold between the pair but it wasn’t a very long lasting fight. Breen went off on stage four and although he could con-tinue and appeared to have escaped relatively unscaved, that wasn’t the case. A puncture ensued on the fol-lowing stage, which cost the Irishman two minutes and effectively ended the battle between him and Kajetanowicz. Sure Kajetanowicz would have liked to fight with Breen until the finish, but on the other hand this played into his cards just fine as well. Without any reason to push the tempo to challenge the two Czechs up front, Kajetanowicz turned it down a notch and opted to defend his third place as it would put him in an excellent position for the champi-onship. After Breen strung together an impressive series of wins earlier this year, bad luck and some personal er-rors have plagued him since. He was in a seemingly unbeatable position af-ter taking three wins from the opening four rounds but after two non-finishes in the following events and another disappointing event looming in Czech, his championship ambitions seem to be slowly slipping out of his grasp.

Top to bottom:Another Barum Rally to forge for Robert Consani.

Likewise, Craig Breen had hoped for a different outcome too.

There were happy faces around too though, Vaclav Pech enjoyed another solid outing in his menacingly sounding Mini John Cooper Works S2000.


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Saturday blastUp front Jan Kopecky took no prisoners on Saturday. The Skoda pilot did just what his team bosses were hoping for by winning all stages. Never out of control, but always on the pace he steadily increased his lead stage by stage to hold well over half a minute in hand before the final leg. On that final leg he backed of a bit but kept a close eye on Pech to maintain the gap at around thirty seconds. It resulted in the perfect result for Skoda who regained their throne after a one-year ab-sence. It was Kopecky’s fifth win at his ERC home-event eleven years after his first win, which also came in a Skoda Fabia, albeit the WRC version. Vaclav Pech made it a Czech 1-2 by clinching the runner-up spot.

Craig Breen managed to overtake Dutchman Hermen Kobus on the penultimate stage to move up to seventh but that didn’t take away the sour taste of disappointment. His main rival Kajetanowicz had a troublefree run to third and extended his ERC lead by 28 more points. As Breen will not compete in Cyprus, Kajetanowicz has the chance to deal a deci-sive blow there with only two rounds remain-ing after Cyprus.

Top:Jan Kopecky flew to his fifth Barum Rally win.

Bottom:

In the ERC fight Kajetan Kajetanowicz took care of business and expanded his championship lead by 28 points.

Barum Czech Rally Zlin / Results

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1. Kopecky – Dresler Skoda Fabia R5 2:17:7.72. Pech – Uhel Mini John Cooper Works +27.33. Kajetanowicz – Baran Ford Fiesta R5 +39.94. Lukyanuk – Amautov Ford Fiesta R5 +1,10.85. Valousek – Havelkova Skoda Fabia S2000 +2,30.06. Cerny – Cernohorsky Skoda Fabia S2000 +4,07.07. Breen – Martin Peugeot 208 T16 +4,25.08. Kobus – de Wild Skoda Fabia R5 +4,31.19. Jakes – Novak Citroën DS3 R5 +5,46.210. Jelinek – Machu Skoda Faia S2000 +6,41.4

2015 FIA ERC Drivers Standings1. Kajetan Kajetanowicz Ford Fiesta R5 159 pts2. Craig Breen Peugeot 208 T16 136 pts3. Alexey Lukyanuk Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X 105 pts4. Robert Consani Citroën DS3 R5 55 pts5. Siim Plangi Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX 65 pts6. Bruno Magalhães Peugeot 208 T16 38 pts7. Jaromir Tarabus Skoda Fabia S2000 37 pts8. Jan Kopecky Skoda Fabia R5 36 pts9. Freddy Loix Skoda Fabia R5 35 pts10. Dominykas Butvilas Subaru Impreza WRX STi 33 pts

Barum Czech Rally Zlin / Results

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Interview / Jean-Baptiste Ley

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Developing the Erc Jean baptiste ley

Jean-Baptiste LeyEurosport /

ERC Promotor

Since the ERC evolved from the IRC the cham-pionship has been solidifying its place in the rallying world. The calendar includes some of the most beautiful rallies in Europe and young drivers are recognizing it as a good step on their way to the WRC. Manufacturers like Peugeot, Skoda an Opel enter factory teams and TV audiences are continuously rising. Eu-rosport’s Jean-Baptiste Ley is one of the driv-ing forces behind the series’ succes.

In this issue of Rally-eMag we caught up with the promoters of he two most important rally championships, the WRC and ERC. In Ieper we spoke to Jean Baptiste Ley the pro-moter of the ERC

Q: Can you tell us about how the ERC is devel-oping at the moment?

A: We are now halfway the season and we are really satisfied about it. Last year we worked a lot to put in place some new rules in order to reinforce the identity of the championship. The biggest improvement was the registration for the drivers. In the past the European Champion-ship was just an addition of some very nice ral-lies around Europe but not a real championship. Our job as a promoter is to reinforce the connec-tion between each individual rally and to support more drivers to participate in more races. Not for example just the Belgian drivers in Belgium and the UK drivers in Ireland.

We are really satisfied now because we have reached no less than ninety-nine registered driv-ers. They can start during the year. And it be-ing an FIA registration, they can register in three categories, ERC1 for Super 2000 and R5 cars, ERC2 for Group N and ERC3 for two wheel drive cars.

As soon as a driver registers for the ERC he re-ceives a big promotion package and also a pri-ority status. With this priority status, they receive better place in the service park and other ben-efits, compared to normal drivers. They also get passes, permanent passes for the whole season and we ensure their exposure is the best as can be.

The cherry on the cake is that we have put in place prize money for privateers, so we distrib-ute 230.00 Euro’s all during the year. It is 20.000 Euro’s per race, split between the seven first pri-vateers. So for instance here in Ieper we have considered that Craig Breen is an official driver, but drivers like Freddy Loix, Kris Princen etcet-era are seen as privateers although they receive support from local companies, they are not seen as official factory drivers. The purpose of this prize money is to give the drivers some money so that they can participate in one or two more races. The quickest privateers can reach seven podiums that will then give them some support.

Q: What is the feedback of the drivers?

A: Of course we are in close relationship with all the drivers we have also put in place a sys-tem of providing information that we send to all drivers before an event. This is extra information above what they get from the rally organizers. It has created a link with all the drivers and they are really satisfied about this effort for all the competitors. The best prove of success is the number of competitors; in the beginning of the season we were expecting some 25 to 30 reg-istrations and we will have some one hundred before the next one in Estonia. It’s a big confir-mation that the direction that we want to take is the good one.

“We have reached no less than99 registered drivers.”


Images: Steven van Veenendaal, FIA ERC


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Q: The drivers that register, do they have to participate in a cer-tain number of events?

A: No, you can register for just one event. We think it is good to invite the drivers to show them all the benefits and to show them that it is a good championship where you can win some prize money that makes it a bit less expensive. A good example that it actually works this way is the Moffet brothers. Last year they just did the Circuit of Ireland. There they discovered the ERC then they decided to do a programme this year. It is again a good ex-ample that our philosophy actually works.

Q: What about the events, do they like it too?

A: Yes definitely. It is really amazing what success we had in the winter conditions at the beginning of the season in the Jänner and the Liepaja. Unfortunately it is not possible to continue in the Jänner.

Q: Why did the Jännerrallye stop?

A: During the Jännerrallye this year we were already aware of the fact that it would be very difficult for the organizing club, to continue. They had difficulties in finding the necessary budget for organizing such an event. Therefore they preferred to have a break of one year. It’s a pity because the Jännerrallye is a very good event. But now we can start the season a bit later and that is good for the drivers. For them as well as for the organizers it is quite difficult to start so early in the year just after Christmas and New Year’s eve.

Though it is a pity that the event had to go, it will not be a big prob-lem for the ERC. We still have very popular events like for instance Ieper. There are a whole lot of spectators here and also competi-tors. It’s amazing. A few weeks ago we were in the Acores and we had a very strong entry of 49 cars, and perfect weather condi-tions. We had a very good shot of the stage around the Volcano. Honestly we think the ERC is in really good health. We are always working to show the dynamics of the fight we are offering and we are improving step by step because we think it is not good to stand still and wait to see what happens.


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Q: What about the TV audience

A: We had fantastic figures about the 2014 season. As you know it takes time to collect all the figures so we are working with last year’s figures, so these are the 2014 figures for all the season. In Eurosport and outside Eurosport we reached 244 million people world wide, which is really good. We broadcast 1096 hours of ERC footage and just for your information, of the 244 million viewers, 108 watched Eurosport, so it’s not even half of the total number of viewers. Most of the time people are thinking about Euro-sport only but it is not only Eurosport.

Q: So there is a lot of interest in the ERC outside Europe?

A: We have very good relationship with local broadcasters who want to broadcast our programmes but we also have really good connections in Asia, as well as in the United States so we have quite a good coverage of the globe.

Q: You lost Corsica…A: Yeah that is true but I think it is a game. As a rally fan I think there is really a place for the event in the WRC. It has a long history. Unfortunately it was not possible for them to stay in the WRC some time ago so it was decided to have Corsica in the IRC before and later in the ERC. But I think an event like Corsica has to survive as an international rally and they con-tinue to have a good relationship with ERC but we fully accept that we are

promoter for the ERC for the FIA so we found it completely normal to help Corsica to come back to WRC.

Q: Last year you told us that you want to bring ERC and WRC closer to-gether…

A: Yes that is exactly one of our strategies. First we have to reinforce the basis of the championship then we have to reinforce our relationship with the national championships and the ERC, after that the next step will be to really connect to WRC.

Q: The junior championship seems to be popular

A: Yes we think it is our biggest success. The ERC junior championship is just two years old and we have 25 registered drivers. An average of no less than 14 drivers start each rally. So there is really big community of junior drivers and the level of competition is amazing.

Q: Yes Chris Ingram told us he wants to do the ERC junior because the level of competition is so much higher than in JWRC

A: Yes we have a very good set up. The kind of car is very well in accord-ance with the budget for a junior programme. And from the media side, we try to promote them as much as we can. We have five minute dedi-cated programmes in the programme of 26 minutes on TV so they know that they will at least appear on television for five minutes per rally.

Chris Ingram (left) and Emil Bergkvist had a great battle in the ERC Junior series with the Swedish Opel driver taking the title. (Images: Steven van Veenendaal)


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Q: And is Eurosport happy with it?

A: Yes very happy because the situation with the championship is very good. In Eurosport Events we now have three major motorsports championships: the World Touringcar Championship WTCC, the Eu-ropean Rally Championship ERC and we also have the World Endur-ance Championship (WEC) for motorbikes. With this, we step by step increase our coverage in different motorsport activities. WTCC is a big success with the coming of Citroën and is very well known now. More than before ERC is a very real international championship with events on snow, gravel tarmac so really a complete championship.

DiscoveryIn Eurosport we are now part of the Discovery Network and that is a re-ally good opportunity for Eurosport because it increases our network enormously and we are proud to be part of this number one pay TV channel.

Q: You are constantly looking for improvements. What do you have in store for the next season?

A: We have to continue the work we started the last two years and re-inforce the level of competition this is the base of everything. As long as you have a lot of drivers in a strong competition, you know you have a lot of spectators and viewers on the TV. This is the way we want to continue.

Q: Is there a replacement for the Jännerrallye?

A: We have a good relationship with all the rallies and we want to con-tinue with them and that is good for our competitors also because they don’t have to get used to new events every year. In this way they can benefit from the experience of the year before. The goal is, as much as possible, to stick to the calendar that we have. But maybe once in a while a newcomer is good. The best example is Estonia that was a really big success in it’s first year

We cannot yet tell you something about new events. We will wait until the presentation of the WRC calendar and after that we will present the ERC calendar. So that could take a few more months but anyway it will not be a revolution in comparison to this year.

Rally-eMag / For My Friends

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for my friendsWhen travelling the world to snap the WRC, our photographer Bas Romeny comes across many interesting scenes, both rally re-lated and not-so rally related. Here are his finds from Finland.

‘Ok, let me help you’

Some said it was fresh, some said it was warm...

‘Be properly dressed for the picture!’

Abbring: ‘Hello men, please fix your clothing’!

Thomas: ‘Now what is this?’

Hey look! That’s us!

A German guy made this, great!

Ich darf alles, meaning: I can do what I want. Food forthoughts.

Red Bull should have made a “Golden Edition”for this event.

JM: Look Willy, my helmet is toonarrow.

So simple..The car runs on plain tap water!(the Toyota Mirai hydrogen car)

My head istoo big...

See what Imean?

see you next time...

Rally-eMag 031 August 2015

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Transcript of Rally-eMag 031 August 2015