FIA’s Event Rotation System Ends!
The announcement by ISC, the WRC Global Promoter of a five year agreement to include Rally Finland in the world rally championship has officially ended the recent unpopular rotation system of selecting qualifying events for the championship. “This is the end of the old rotation system”, said ISC Chairman Neil Duncanson. “This is evidence of what we want to achieve, which is having the best rallies in the heart of the championship”. ISC stated that they hope to sign a number of WRC’s major events to long term deals in the coming months. There is no mention of the future location for NORF, the only event in the world championship to be held every year since the start of the series based at the same city. This is the final year of the current agreement between the rally and Jyvaskyla, but the perceived greed of the city’s hotelliers, whose prices were hiked up to three times for the days of the rally, means that there will be renewed pressure to move the event elsewhere.

World Cup Takes Shape
Interest in the FIA’s recently announced World Cup project for 2010 season is gaining strength following the news that both Ford and Citroen will be present in the 2011 world championship season, which means running new generation World Rally Cars are based on Super 2000 designs. Currently it is expected that the Cup will be based on seven selected rounds in the 2010 WRC calendar, maybe incorporating rounds which will also count for the Production Car Championship. If this is to happen, the PCWRC will continue to be based on driver results whereas the World Cup might be for makes. The plan is that the Cup will be for homologated S2000 cars (which currently come from eight manufacturers in addition to Citroen and Ford), but will not be for an new cars modified out of S2000

PSD Eliminations Begin!
Five young Pirelli Star Drivers candidates earned their place in the grand European Shoot-out due to take place in Austria in September, after elimination tests held in Jyvaskyla before the start of Neste Oil Rally Finland. It was a great success for Baltic countries! The five concerned were Maris Nieksans from Latvia, Vytautas Svedas from Lithuania, Anders Kjaer from Norway, Victor Hendriksson from Sweden and Ott Tanak from Estonia. Both candidates from the British Isles (Keith Cronin from Ireland and Kris Hall from England, together with Joonas Lindroos from Finland had their hopes dashed, Cronin for the second year running.

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