Rally Sweden heads will still defy Historic advice

Rally Sweden looks set to continue to ignore the advice of the FIA and the world’s leading drivers and continue to run its historic category between the first and second loops of stages.

The leading drivers were united in their efforts to get this changed following last year’s event, while FIA safety delegate Michele Mouton recommended a rethink for the 2019 itinerary. But still, the historics remained and still, according to Ott Tanak and his fellow drivers, they made a mess of the road and compromised the competition.

Tanak repeated calls from last year for the historics to be run after the main field had passed through the stages twice – even if that meant them running into the dark.

The Toyota driver told MN: “If it [Rally Sweden Historic] would run after the second loop there would be no issue for us – I don’t understand why they don’t do this. When you look back in the history, everything happened in the night! It hurts the road and the competition and everything.”

Even ardent historic fan Jari-matti Latvala added his weight to the argument, echoing the sentiment of his Toyota team-mate. “It makes the road really difficult,” he said. “It’s not good, it’s so hard to hold the rear of the car in the line when the conditions are like this after the historics. I love these cars, but we have to do something.”

Rally Sweden CEO Glenn Olsson was adamant there wouldn’t be any change for 2020: “If we take away the historics, the WRC cars are still behind the Juniors and they don’t take the same tracks. If the historics were going to damage the road or if there was a safety issue then we would have taken them away.”