DRIVERS SLATE AVERAGE SPEED DEBATE AS FIA INVESTIGATES
Team and fia meeting set for rally germany to discuss wrc speeds
The FIA is investigating an improved method of measuring stage safety following criticism of the use of average speeds to decide the safest roads in the World Rally Championship.
The route for last month’s Rally Finland was altered significantly to make use of twistier, more narrow roads which lowered the average speed, but left many questioning whether the route itself was any safer.
Numerous competitors felt the Jyvaskyla-based event was compromised to “tick a box” with the governing body’s recommendation that average speeds for stages fall beneath 130kph (80mph). The changes, which came at the expense of some classic stretches of stage, reduced the average speed in Finland from Kris Meeke’s record-breaking 2016 run at 78.68mph by 2.52mph.
Drivers were up in arms last year when chicanes appeared on the Rally Finland route to cut speeds following Meeke’s fastest finish. Using more technical roads was an alternative to that, but the FIA will meet with event organisers at next week’s Rally Germany to discuss the matter.
Rally Finland winner Ott Tanak was at the heart of this debate – just as he was at Rally Sweden last year. On the second round of the 2017 season, Tanak posted an average speed of 85mph (138kph) to complete the 19.64-mile Knon stage in 13m45.5s.
Despite no major incidents on that test, the FIA canned the second run due to the excessively high speed – most of which came through long straight sections towards the finish.
“That stage wasn’t dangerous,” Tanak told MN. “I don’t think there’s a safety issue when we’re using the wide roads in Finland. Finland is fast, we know that. But with these cars, everything is stable and they’re nice to drive. I have never felt there’s been any question for the safety at that rally.
“The average speed doesn’t show so much. There are more and more dangerous places where the trees are very close [in the narrow sections]. These are the bad places – the wide road this doesn’t make the route dangerous. Look in Corsica, there is the narrow road and that’s more dangerous than this.”
Citroen’s Craig Breen said the time had come for a new way of looking at measuring the safety of stages.
“That stage in Sweden last year [Knon],” said Breen, “that was one of the safest stages of the championship. The speed is not the ultimate element of danger, it’s the need for an eye for the detail and looking at this and saying ‘Yes, that’s dangerous’. Whether that’s a corner or a section or whatever. That’s what we need, not somebody sitting down and looking at a sheet of paper or a graph or whatever and saying ‘that’s too fast!’.
“Using the smaller roads in Finland brought the average speed down, but it doesn’t make them safer. I’m in favour of those and not the chicanes from last year, but the majority of the time it’s not the speed that’s bringing the danger, it’s another element on the stage and that’s what we need to focus on.”
World champion and former Finland winner Sebastien Ogier said he enjoyed some of the narrower sections. But he was pretty firm in his opinion on the 2017 solution to Finland’s problem of excess speed.
“The chicane is bulls**t,” he told MN. “Anything artificial in the stage is shit for me. A lot of the new sections are nice and challenging but when you go wider and wider it’s just superquick and it this makes a high level of risk and danger.”
FIA rally director Yves Matton said he welcomed the drivers’ comments ahead of the planned meeting in Germany. And he added that he was as keen as anybody not to make major changes to the natural flow of stages.
“There is no regulation [stating organisers must not exceed 130kph average on stages] for the moment,” Matton told MN. “The average speed is not a finite or a final measure. It’s more to say there is a cap, to say that over 130kph average and the stage is going too fast. When we see this average speed, we know when the average is this high, for sure you have many corners in there where the speed is very, very high and this is dangerous. I think you can only agree that the faster [the road] is, the more dangerous it is.
“I have not the answer for the moment on how we solve this, but we seek out these dangerous places by using the average speed. Maybe we can find some solutions. We have a meeting in Germany with the organisers and this is one of the topics: I want to discuss what can we do to improve this, while keeping the stages as natural and enjoyable for the drivers and avoiding the most dangerous places.
“We know we are in the rally and we are not able to avoid all the dangerous places, but we can work on it to make the stages as safe as possible.”
Matton added that Rally Finland’s decision to move to smaller roads rather than chicanes had been its own, rather than via a formal request from the FIA.
Rally Finland clerk of the course Kai Tarkiainen was frustrated by the debate, telling MN ahead of the event: “Average speed itself is not a very good measure for anything in rallying. Also, from what I have spoken with the drivers, they do not seem to be worried about it either. I think it is more important to make our spectators understand the risks involved and do our utmost to keep them in designated areas.
“Average speed, as such, did not impact our route selection, but we need to listen to the FIA and having had discussions with [Michele] Mouton (FIA safety delegate) on our route, it is clear that they hope we could find stages where the speeds would not be as high as in the past.”