Shorter events could be the answer to congested calendar

The FIA is considering running shorter events to try to pack in more rounds of the World Rally Championship.

While the governing body and WRC Promoter work on next year’s schedule, FIA rally director Jarmo Mahonen has offered the long list of events on the sidelines fresh hope of a way onto the calendar – by cutting their rallies in half.

In addition to possibly halving the competitive time for some events, Mahonen has reiterated his determination to introduce a policy of event rotation in regions such as Asia, where there are now six credible cases for events.

“We cannot host this many rallies in the Asia-pacific region,” Mahonen told MN, “We have New Zealand, Japan, China, Malaysia, Korea and Australia, so we need rotation. I know it’s not popular and it won’t be done on a year-by-year basis – that can’t work – but we are investigating this.

“We have already started investigating European events in a different way: instead of rallies including 350km [220 miles], they run 250km [150 miles] and run in one and a half days [instead of three]. This way you could host more rallies in the championship. We need to go a couple of years and see what this puzzle looks like because still, we haven’t given up on the championship becoming more global. For that to happen it means some of the rallies from Europe have to disappear.”