Publicat in: March 11, 2009, Vizualizari: 160
Cyprus Rally is back again in the world championship after three years' absence. This is an event historically full of drama. Every year there seem to be special memories. The last time the event counted for the world series was in 2006 when Dani Sordo crashed into a roundabout on a downtown stage, the year before two top cars were consumed by fire, the rally cars nearly never reached the Mediterranean island in 2004 and then the winning Peugeot was excluded, back in 2003 no fewer then NINE works cars forced to retire. Never a quiet life at the Cyprus Rally.
As round 3 of the 2009 WRC, Cyprus will be special. It will be the first mixed surfaced world championship rally since Sanremo 1996, with stages dedicated on the Friday entirely to asphalt and on the Saturday and Sunday to stages which are essentially all-gravel. This split personality comes from the wish for the organisers not to require competitors to drive over deteriorating gravel stages more than once, especially because this is a qualifying event for the two-wheel drive Junior World Rally Championship cars. It led to a curiosity that a 3.8km stretch of road is being used as part of stages run both on the first and the final day. In fact this road is a short tarmac interlude in what otherwise is one of the longest gravel stages of the event. There are three all-asphalt venues, each covered twice, and six predominantly gravel stages of which only one short stage is repeated. The pre-rally shakedown test will be run on a short asphalt road. For competitors the idea of the majority of stage venues being run once-only serves to extend the pre-event reconnaissance work all to be carried out within the regulatory two day format. This is always a daunting prospect but particularly so here because the roads are very twisty in the Troodos Hills where the rally is based. Indeed the Cyprus Rally is historically quite the slowest rally in the championship.
When the rally has been held in summer months, these slow roads bring with them endless technical challenges to engine cooling. A world championship Cyprus Rally however has never been run as early in the year as this event, and teams are hoping the air in the mountainous forests will this year be cooler. This is likely. After years of rainless conditions on the island, the earlier part of the year has been exceptionally wet, and certainly the scenery will be unusually green in colour.
The mixed surface format led to extensive pre-rally lobbying from teams who baulked at the financial prospect of bringing a lot of extra equipment (rims, tyres, brakes, suspension units and so on) to Cyprus, not to mention anxiety at having to make such a basic change of car specification in the time limits of an end-of-day service. The solution was that teams would only be supplied with gravel tyres, even for the asphalt stages. This then led to further complications. FIA officials were concerned that teams would be tempted to run part-worn, therefore theoretically more performant, tyres instead of new tyres. And then the JWRC contingent raised objections saying the front-drive cars tackling asphalt stages on gravel tyres presented a security risk. So JWRC cars were allowed to run on racing tyres, four-wheel drive cars on gravel tyres.
The total number of entries is small but there was quite the highest proportion of priority drivers ever seen on a world championship rally. There had been a lot of behind-the-scenes work at the FIA to minimise the image problem, of small entries and allowed organisers to keep open the entry lists till seven days before the event. Another major recent decision is that registered Manufacturer Teams (M2 teams) could be represented by single entries instead of the normal two-cars, and this let Munchi's team come to the WRC party. A preliminary list showed 35 competitors of which 30 were priority drivers, including two Guest (wild-card) entries in the PCWRC category. This is the first world rally of the season which counted for both JWRC and PCWRC, but afraid of the event's reputation for roughness only three JWRC cars have entered. The FIA have rules that when on the four time the JWRC and PCWRC crews compete on the same event, the drivers of the PCWRC cars will carry a three-digit competition number, with a 1 in front of their regular number.Top of the event's publicity queue is Sebastien Loeb who will score his fiftieth world rally win if he won this event, and on account of the new red with white colour scheme of the Citroen Total team
People specially interested to know how hot the rally will be the drivers of the 2008 Subaru Impreza "N14" cars. The FIA had allowed the company to homologate special intercooler water spray units, to help fight off the underbonnet heatsoak created by the standardised mounting of the intercooler above the engine. STI staff anxiously supplied these parts, together with new uprated turbochargers, to as many crews as possible. On 19th March the FIA's World Motor Sport Council will announce future world rally car technical rules and the plans for the transition of the formulae.
3mmm
Cyprus Rally is back again in the world championship after three years' absence. This is an event historically full of drama. Every year there seem to be special memories. The last time the event counted for the world series was in 2006 when Dani Sordo crashed into a roundabout on a downtown stage, the year before two top cars were consumed by fire, the rally cars nearly never reached the Mediterranean island in 2004 and then the winning Peugeot was excluded, back in 2003 no fewer then NINE works cars forced to retire. Never a quiet life at the Cyprus Rally.
As round 3 of the 2009 WRC, Cyprus will be special. It will be the first mixed surfaced world championship rally since Sanremo 1996, with stages dedicated on the Friday entirely to asphalt and on the Saturday and Sunday to stages which are essentially all-gravel. This split personality comes from the wish for the organisers not to require competitors to drive over deteriorating gravel stages more than once, especially because this is a qualifying event for the two-wheel drive Junior World Rally Championship cars. It led to a curiosity that a 3.8km stretch of road is being used as part of stages run both on the first and the final day. In fact this road is a short tarmac interlude in what otherwise is one of the longest gravel stages of the event. There are three all-asphalt venues, each covered twice, and six predominantly gravel stages of which only one short stage is repeated. The pre-rally shakedown test will be run on a short asphalt road. For competitors the idea of the majority of stage venues being run once-only serves to extend the pre-event reconnaissance work all to be carried out within the regulatory two day format. This is always a daunting prospect but particularly so here because the roads are very twisty in the Troodos Hills where the rally is based. Indeed the Cyprus Rally is historically quite the slowest rally in the championship.
When the rally has been held in summer months, these slow roads bring with them endless technical challenges to engine cooling. A world championship Cyprus Rally however has never been run as early in the year as this event, and teams are hoping the air in the mountainous forests will this year be cooler. This is likely. After years of rainless conditions on the island, the earlier part of the year has been exceptionally wet, and certainly the scenery will be unusually green in colour.
The mixed surface format led to extensive pre-rally lobbying from teams who baulked at the financial prospect of bringing a lot of extra equipment (rims, tyres, brakes, suspension units and so on) to Cyprus, not to mention anxiety at having to make such a basic change of car specification in the time limits of an end-of-day service. The solution was that teams would only be supplied with gravel tyres, even for the asphalt stages. This then led to further complications. FIA officials were concerned that teams would be tempted to run part-worn, therefore theoretically more performant, tyres instead of new tyres. And then the JWRC contingent raised objections saying the front-drive cars tackling asphalt stages on gravel tyres presented a security risk. So JWRC cars were allowed to run on racing tyres, four-wheel drive cars on gravel tyres.
The total number of entries is small but there was quite the highest proportion of priority drivers ever seen on a world championship rally. There had been a lot of behind-the-scenes work at the FIA to minimise the image problem, of small entries and allowed organisers to keep open the entry lists till seven days before the event. Another major recent decision is that registered Manufacturer Teams (M2 teams) could be represented by single entries instead of the normal two-cars, and this let Munchi's team come to the WRC party. A preliminary list showed 35 competitors of which 30 were priority drivers, including two Guest (wild-card) entries in the PCWRC category. This is the first world rally of the season which counted for both JWRC and PCWRC, but afraid of the event's reputation for roughness only three JWRC cars have entered. The FIA have rules that when on the four time the JWRC and PCWRC crews compete on the same event, the drivers of the PCWRC cars will carry a three-digit competition number, with a 1 in front of their regular number.Top of the event's publicity queue is Sebastien Loeb who will score his fiftieth world rally win if he won this event, and on account of the new red with white colour scheme of the Citroen Total team
People specially interested to know how hot the rally will be the drivers of the 2008 Subaru Impreza "N14" cars. The FIA had allowed the company to homologate special intercooler water spray units, to help fight off the underbonnet heatsoak created by the standardised mounting of the intercooler above the engine. STI staff anxiously supplied these parts, together with new uprated turbochargers, to as many crews as possible. On 19th March the FIA's World Motor Sport Council will announce future world rally car technical rules and the plans for the transition of the formulae.
3mmm
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