Should the WRC re-introduce qualifying? The teams have their say

There were perhaps only two words mentioned more than ‘Martins’ and ‘Sesks’ when the World Rally Championship visited Latvia last weekend, and those were ‘road position’.

Championship leader Thierry Neuville reignited a debate surrounding how the WRC determines the road order for rallies. The very nature of rallying means that someone is always going to be disadvantaged by road position.

For gravel rallies, being first to tackle the stages is costly on the timing screens unless the weather intervenes, while being first on the road for asphalt events is often seen as an advantage as the roads often become dirtier and slower with every pass as gravel is dragged out from cuts.

Under the current regulations, the championship leader is required to open the roads on the first day of competition which is designed to level the playing field and create a closer championship battle by preventing the leader from running away aided by a favourable road position. The road order is then flipped for the second leg using the finishing positions from the first day.

In Latvia, road order frustrations bubbled to the surface, led by Neuville, who feels it’s time for the regulations to change.

“Why I should have the pain in the ass all weekend, all year long,” said Neuville. “We did a great job in the beginning of the year, and now there’s no reward at all.

“We could have, whoever it is, Ott, Elfyn or myself, the winner of the championship at the end of the year winning maybe one rally. When [Sebastien] Ogier was opening the road there was some tarmac rally in the middle of the gravel rallies, and now we have seven gravel rallies in a row, what can you do?

“Even with a 40-point lead, there’s no way to keep those points, so we have to fight.”

Latvia created a perfect storm for this outburst as unusually only three of the 15 stages across Friday and Saturday were repeated making the road cleaning effect worse. Most WRC events operate loops of three or four stages that are repeated reducing the damage of road cleaning.

To further exacerbate this road cleaning phenomenon was the fact that four of the 10 car Rally1 field were part-time drivers meaning those quartet benefitted from favourable road positions compared to the full-time drivers due to their position in the championship.

This is not the first time this…