WRC on ......

angry_fox

Its a pity that there’s hardly any coverage of the WRC on TV. Its far more thrilling to watch Petter Solberg do what he does best than watching Moto GP or F1. Moto GP has its moments, [font=&quot]especially[/font] for over taking but with WRC you get a better sense of speed and the risks the drivers take going into every corner.

aidan_dunne

Agreed, it would be great to see more coverage of the WRC (and rallying in general) on television. The problem is, due to the format of rallying, it's not a particularly "television-friendly" sport. And by that I mean the sheer logistics involved in covering it, even with modern technology. The distances involved, the fact that events take place over a couple of days as opposed to a couple of hours, the different classes of cars that run during a single event, all that and more means that the current coverage we have of seeing daily highlights and perhaps the occassional live coverage of a superspecial stage and the like is the best we can expect to get, for the foreseeable future at least.

I know when David Richards took over ISC (International Sportsworld Communications who do the WRC coverage) from Bernie Ecclestone a few years ago, his ultimate dream was to have complete live coverage of rally events and get the WRC to a stage where it would rival F1 in terms of TV coverage and audiences. That's very unlikely to ever happen, though. As I said, the logistics involved would be just monumental. Imagine how many TV cameras it would take to provide extensive live coverage of even just the top 10 or so cars on a WRC event over a single stage, let alone every stage? Unlike F1 and other forms of circuit racing where you have cars circulating around a fixed track, lap after lap, and it's just a case of putting at most a couple of dozen cameras around the circuit, you can't realistically do that on a typical rally stage. You'd need hundreds of cameras. It just wouldn't be feasible. So unfortunately, David Richards' dream looks like it's just going to remain that, a dream, for many years to come anyway. And we'll have to continue to settle for our nightly highlights on Eurosport or whatever.

Still, it's better than nothing. I remember when the only extensive coverage of an entire WRC event would be when the BBC used to show nightly highlights of the RAC Rally. And, apart from that, the most you would get to see of the other WRC rounds would be a 15 or 20 minute highlights package stuck somewhere in on 'Grandstand' or during 'Top Gear Motorsport' years ago....... if you were lucky! :eek: At least if you have Eurosport, you get to see nightly highlights of each day of each round, plus an overall highlights show later in the week, usually repeated a couple of times, plus a highlights show of either the Production or Junior World Rally Championships, whichever may happen to be taking place as a support event on each round. If you don't have Eurosport, well, there's always ITV's so-called "coverage"! :rolleyes:

aidan_dunne

Oh, and speaking of the BBC's coverage of rallying........

BRING BACK TONY MASON!!!!! I say!

Was always a great rally reporter. Who can ever forget him doing a report from the top of the Col de Turini on the Monte in the dark years ago, hundreds of spectators standing around when, all of a sudden, a barrage of snowballs ended up pelting the poor bloke into near oblivion! That clip always seems to turn up on those TV "blooper"-type shows every now and again and I can never help but laugh my head off at it!

Tony Mason..... fantastic co-driver, great rally reporter and a true-blue proper bobble-hat wearing (or in his case, his famous flat-cap!) rally fan at heart....... and a top bloke to boot!

angry_fox

Turning to the internet now for good coverage of the WRC. Over on wrc.com, they provide excellent coverage of the event. Excellent in car on-boards. The annual subscription is kinda steep....