Jacques Behar, President of Eurosport events and promoter of the renegade IRC (International Rally Challenge) series believes the IRC has a firm place in the rallying life. "I think we can live together with the World Rally Championship. There is no policy to integrate our events into the WRC, which now rotates its events, but we have several requests from WRC events to run an IRC event in their gap-year. Maybe we will end up with two to four such events within our calendar." Speaking before the start of the Rally of Portugal, second round in this year's IRC series in which no fewer than 17 Super 2000 cars were taking part, he added "this may be only the second full year of the IRC, but we are already getting quite well known. If we can build up the support of the manufacturers the teams and the events, we can be something very important, working alongside WRC, two good championships side by side".

New ideas are arriving all the time. "The IRC has instigated the Supporters Events system, for events which would eventually like to join the IRC. What we offer them now is the chance to promote themselves through the IRC website, so they can be part of the IRC community. If suddenly we find we have a vacancy in the championship, one of them can be selected. It is not the same as the WRC's candidate rally system because these events must already be of sufficient standard to enter the WRC straightaway. The IRC candidate system is more accessible for events".

The Eurovision television coverage is going well: "We are currently concentrating on the format of the programme, to create a programme because we want to have live coverage, a project which has not been tried often in rallying, to be sure we can do it, and make sure the audience is there. We started with making 15 minute programmes, now we are making 26 minute programmes. Now we are able to offer these programmes to television companies everywhere. We are not the only television programme active in rallying, and we are not limited to the classic formats of the world championship programmes. We are pursuing a new trend. The WRC and the IRC are two different levels, each appealing to different types of enthusiasts."

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