“Gary Ablett skips Captain’s day due to groin injury,” was the headline news story when I went down to the post office today.
I thought to myself, what’s it going to take to hear “Eli Evans’s arm could slow him in Perth”? Well only the destruction of most ball sports in the country!
Every day, mainstream media is fed a diet of carefully constructed media stories to fill up the news by slick media engines controlled by ball sports, and rallying coverage suffers.
Rallying does not count. When Ott Tanak somersaulted into the lake in Rally Mexico I thought “Wow, this should make the news”. It was the most spectacular exit from a stage in recent times that I was sure it would make it to the news desk here.
It didn’t.
Our news cycle for rallying is accident led. If a car crashes into spectators the media are all over it. I have been involved in rallying media since 1982. I have written countless rally stories over that time, taken thousands of rally pictures as well. In my early career these were regularly published for crews and events.
With the creation of the internet, opportunity increased to provide even more coverage for our sport. Websites, along with detailed articles about the sport, could easily be produced.
David Evans, the respected Autosport rally journalist, recently commented - “Does the WRC need crashes to matter?”
In his article he makes some salient points. “Commitment, bravery and brilliance made seven minutes of the best television in the World Rally Championship”.
The only problem is, bugger all are watching. Interestingly, this year the World Rally Championship has provided some of the most spectacular motoring action that anyone could expect to see on the television, a great example being the power stage in Rally Mexico where Sebastien Ogier won the stage by 5.6 seconds, relegating Ostberg and Mikkelson as second rate. Great television, but only for those train spotters who are interested. It was a titanic clash of top sportsmen.
Is our sport at the top level really that exciting? For me, who has championed the cause of classic rallying in Australia for the last seven years, lamenting the passing golden age of rallying, you only have to watch the WRC coverage to realise that these are very special people.
I make the claim here that some of our leading drivers now are every bit, if not better, than the legends of rallying. You only have to look at their stage times - in many cases they are travelling over stages five to seven seconds faster than the Group B era, which most of us accept as the most exciting time in the sport.
Currently we are watching Sebastien Ogier dominate the sport much the same way as Sebastien Loeb did a few years back. A true talent. But who knows that?
These young guys, in my view, are the most talented sportsmen in any field. Now before you cut me down, consider this. At this year’s F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne, the cars were lapping some 12 seconds slower than the lap record set by Michael Schumacher. The in-car footage was great but not spectacular, certainly not ‘hold your breath’ stuff. Even the motoring media said the event was a bit so-so.
Every top-level sportsman that gets in a rally car with a top rally driver, especially the WRC stars, jumps out absolutely gobsmacked at their talent, their commitment and their bravery at attacking the stages.
There is no doubt that elite sportsmen are very good at their sport, but few are on the ragged edge of survival like the elite WRC driver. Maybe guys like base-jumper Jeb Corliss, but there are few others.
But who knows this? In my view the people that matter don’t know. Mainstream editors of daily newspapers certainly don’t know, most sporting correspondents don’t know, and even some motoring magazines don’t know.
So we have to ask why is this? Can anyone be blamed? Well, the buck stops at the top level of the sport with the FIA, the WRC is their championship and it’s evident that they have found it difficult to provide a decent promoter for what, frankly, is one of the world’s most exciting sports of any kind.
Next in line must be the manufacturers; they pump multi-millions into the sport, especially in Europe, but do little to engage with the population at large or even people who buy their cars. Volkswagen have released a Polo WRC car in Europe, with a few go-faster stripes and that’s about it. Is that really the best manufacturers can do? There is no real engagement here by manufacturers in Australia.
And it’s the youth market they miss. The WRC is dominated by young, healthy crews - surely a marketer’s paradise?
Hyundai is a classic example. They spend in excess of 80 million Euros to go rallying. They hold less than 4% of the European market.
Last year, Chris Atkinson was our lone WRC driver. Could Hyundai have done more to promote their cars with Atkinson?
Where was our Hyundai i20 WRC road car? The girls would have bought it in droves.
In 1977 Ford released the Escort Escapee. It was essentially a 2-litre Escort with factory stripes to commemorate the 1977 Southern Cross Rally.
In recent memory Subaru were the only manufacturer to leverage their involvement in rallying, with the WRX from 1994 through to about 1998, and the car to have was a blue WRX with gold wheels. The late Possum Bourne showed the way to engage with consumers to buy cars benefiting his rally team. Mitsubishi dragged the Evo 6.5 Makinen Edition to market, still sought after today.
I’ve been in senior media manager roles for about 25 years. Obtaining information from manufacturers has often been like getting blood out of a stone. When international events in Australia were putting supplements together to promote the sport and to promote the drivers and the crews, obtaining enough information of suitable quality was an incredibly difficult task. Often we had nothing.
Rallying’s profile can only be lifted by everyone involved in the sport, from the sport’s administrators, to the manufacturers, to each crew. Not everybody wants to be a media star, but plenty do.
It is the responsibility of everybody who participates in the sport to be an ambassador for the sport and to make sure that they are part of the profile and image of the sport. It does not take much to send a few words of to RallySport Magazine or rally.com.au or Auto Action or even Speed Café. Some good quality photos of your team, combined with what your plan is for the next event, will often be published.
Most motoring organisations that I speak to really suffer from lack of content and this hurts our profile as there is nothing to publish, there is nothing to talk about, so therefore there is nothing to promote. Ultimately this filters through to a lack of support for the sport.
Rallying provides a much-needed boost for the local community where ever a rally is held. Most of us understand the economic benefits of rallies held, especially in rural communities or country towns. Local newspapers will publish stories if they get information, either from organisers or from crews themselves.
The Australian Rally Championship boasts television coverage for each of its rounds, including up to three repeats of each program, claiming exposure of up to 14 hours per round. Combine this with a social media platform and event exposure, and it should mean that we can lift the profile of our sport. To their credit, they are doing the best that they can with the resources they have.
I make no criticism of their efforts. I’ve been part of their team in the past, but responsibility for the profile of the sport also lies with each competitor. How many top crews actually send out marketing information about their team or results? Very few indeed, and generally less than a handful.
The sport at the top end in Australia cannot flourish if crews don’t spend some resources on promoting their activity in the Championship. They cannot leave the entire task up to the ARC, hoping that that is all they need. They must do much more to create a profile for themselves and their team. They must budget to spend money promoting themselves.
We need to see human interest stories about the crews that compete in the cars. We need to see stories like – “Simon Evans says he can easily beat his brother” at this week’s opening round of the ARC. We need competitors to challenge each other publicly, we need to see and hear controversy.
The media is never going to pick up “Simon Evans drives Honda” - it’s just not interesting. We need to rethink and rejig the way in which we promote our sport, and we need to focus and concentrate on the people inside the cars and not the cars themselves.
Yesterday, I met with a senior executive from a camera company interested in getting involved in rallying. They currently support surfing and we got talking about some of the key figures in surfing.
One of our key problems is that we are not focused on the people of the sport. Neal Bates, Ross Dunkerton, Simon Evans and others should be household names, but the sport never made them heroes in the eyes of the general public. They are, of course, our heroes.
How do we move on?
Everyone who competes in a rally car, in my view, is responsible for the sport’s image and profile. Essentially rallying is the competitor’s sport. Many of us derive pleasure from being officials and love to help out, but let’s face it, it’s the crews in the cars that is what the sport is all about.
I think the responsibility falls upon crews to all contribute to the image of the sport, and this can be done very simply by making sure that the media manager for the event that you participate in knows what you’re up to, has a decent photograph of your car and has enough information to pass on and provide the media with the information that they need.
This is important for state championship events and above. It’s not so important for club level rallies. If you’re not interested in promotion of your team, then you are not interested in helping with the profile of the sport. That’s okay, but then you can’t be critical as to why your sponsors don’t get the coverage that they deserve. The ball is in your court.
It will take a long time, if ever, for the mainstream media to recognise rallying as a form of motorsport that is exciting and interesting to watch. Certainly this claim can be made at WRC level where it is certainly spectacular to watch the stars in action.
Refining the way television coverage is provided, focusing on the stars and the action that they provide, in my view, is the key to making the coverage more interesting. It is very easy for television programs to end up to be a video version of the results.
Focusing on the challenges that the crew’s face, the conditions that they have to compete in and the close results between the top crews is the story. And it’s a good one, we just have to make it so.
Save some of your resources, write some information about your team, get a professional to do it if you’re no good at it. Provide some good photographs, there are plenty of good shooters out there and, importantly, send it to motoring media outlets, your local paper, your local TV station.
Don’t despair of the result. You are building your team’s profile even if you can’t see it, you will soon discover that your material will get published over time.
We have so many interests and activities that all jostle for our time every day. Rallying can cut through, but everyone has to be part of the process.
- Dallas Dogger