RallySport Magazine’s Martin Holmes says that football may provide a solution to rallying's current calendar crisis! August 24th's meeting of current and potential organisers of events in the FIA's World Rally Championship suggested that a football-style promotion-and-relegation system could provide the future basis for choosing which events will qualify for the series.
With the World Rally Championship Commission remaining the arbiter which makes proposals to the World Council, events would be promoted or relegated partly on points of evaluation, including excellence of organisation and geographical preference.
“It is understood that ‘excellence’ would be based on a series of criteria to be judged by the specialist FIA Delegates at rallies (for example, media, safety, medical etc),” Holmes says.
“At this meeting organisers were provided with a dossier identifying issues involved. The relative weighting of the points of evaluation have not yet been agreed, but the meeting was anxious to have a completely transparent method of choosing which events will be in the championships,” he added.
The WRCC supports the 16-round 2007 WRC calendar as announced previously, despite yesterday’s announcement of the new location for Rally Australia.
“These latest ideas seem to kick previous alternative proposals about rotation and event selection "into touch", by introducing a completely new approach to the question of which rallies should count for future world championships," he said.
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