You can't keep a good man – or sport – down

Aeschylus. Know him? Seems he knows - or knew - Ford's Malcolm Wilson. Even though he was born 2500 years before the World Rally Championship's longest-serving team principal.

Aeschylus must have been familiar with Wilson's work. One line from Agamemnon - one of his (Aeschylus's, not Malcolm's) livelier productions, centred on a murderously feisty wife looking to exact revenge for all manner of foul play - highlights the familiarity.

'It is the nature of mortals, to kick a man when he is down.'

That line might have been delivered for the first time in around 450BC but, for Wilson, it was never truer than last week.

And the mortals in question were Jari-Matti Latvala and Petter Solberg.

The Finn and his Norwegian mate were the most public mortals. There were plenty more - sitting behind desks in offices in buildings with a big Blue Oval on the wall - who had laid the boot into Wilson before the WRC arrived in Sardinia for last weekend's Rally d'Italia.

The atmosphere at Ford's traditional pre-rally 'happy hour' media event was strange. Coming so soon after Monday's shock announcement, there remained a feeling of disbelief, an innate inability to take in the full consequences of what had been revealed.

Wilson had taken it in. Undoubtedly some of the 230 M-Sport staff were still struggling.

So, that was Monday. Then came Wednesday and the confirmation of Latvala's departure - a story broken by AUTOSPORT earlier in the year - from Ford to Volkswagen. And, by Friday, Wilson's week of woe was complete.

A Sebastien Loeb retirement usually means a Ford shoo-in on a WRC round. Not this time. This time Latvala crashed. Twice. That he didn't even have his eyes on the road for the second shunt merely heightened the incredulity of the situation.

Ford's Gerard Quinn was all smiles with Wilson at ASI in January © LAT

And then Solberg, safe in second, managed to break a cross-member, which is good for a 15-tonne force, against the solid end of a ditch culvert.

And that was that; mortals abound, shoeing the floored Cumbrian. Wilson reckoned he was lost for words. I'll wager Latvala and Solberg would debate that...

Latvala's first shunt was forgivable. It was an accident. And hard-charging Finns can be prone to those. The line between unspeakable brilliance and the trees is thin and, after dancing down it unscathed for the past few events, Latvala tripped badly last week.

Latvala's second shunt was unforgivable. With the radiator whacked and the alternator smacked, the Rally GB winner pressed on regardless and, distracted by what must have been a Christmas tree-style display of lights on the dash, he looked up to find a corner.

"How surprising..." commentated Wilson, mid-way through his disbelieving description of the incident.

Solberg was adamant he hadn't been pushing too hard. I can see both sides with this argument. Yes, he had dropped time to Evgeny Novikov in the previous split - something that would certainly have been enough for the 2003 champion to give the Fiesta a few more beans - but his description of the shunt underlined his moderate pace.

OK, he forgot to mention the culvert (talking instead about a stone), but that was the heat of the moment. Solberg had cut deeper into the corner than anybody before him and when the front-left wheel dropped into the ditch and clipped the end of the culvert, it was wrenched out of line.

Solberg's big point was that it was his lack of commitment that caused the incident. And I can see that point. If he'd been completely on it, the car would have been drifting at the apex with less lock and an unloaded left-front that would probably have kissed the culvert. Or even missed it altogether.

Solberg denied he was pushing too hard when he whacked a culvert © LAT

But, this being Wilson's week of woe, instant retirement from the day beckoned.

Through all of that, Mikko Hirvonen sailed serenely on towards his first win of the season - or at least his first win that survived post-event scrutiny.

There are those - and I have to be honest I've been among them in the past - who have talked in detrimental tones about the Citroen number two's apparent career emphasis on consistency rather than swashbuckling speed.

Last week, Hirvonen was smack, bang in the middle of a real-deal fight with Loeb. The pair had halved the two stages run and the Frenchman was a second up when he bent his steering on stage three. Hirvonen earned that win and he absolutely deserved it. And, in taking it, he piled yet more woe in Wilson's direction.

It was on MW's budget that Hirvonen built that ability and subsequent reputation for getting to the finish of rallies with a bucket-load of points in tow.

The big, bright silver lining in a cloudy Wilson week was the three cars that followed Hirvonen's DS3 WRC home. They were all M-Sport-built Fiesta RS WRCs and they were driven by three of the WRC's hottest young talents around.

Ford's decision allied to a similar - if telegraphed - move from Mini three days before served to dampen the optimism that had pervaded planet WRC in recent weeks.

The continued lack of direction or plans from the WRC's new promoter was a recurring theme. Now, there will be plenty out there happy to label me as nothing more than a doom-monger. Or, as the urban dictionary would have it: a fear-peddling sad sack, hell-bent on scaring the bejesus out of all and sundry with grim warnings of near-future events.

I'd rather call myself a realist.

Tell me, has the deal been done? Yes or no?

M-Sport has supported the WRC Academy, won by Elfyn Evans, this year © LAT

No. Thank you.

I can fully understand the reasons why it's not done yet, but all I'm asking for is some news, some confidence-inspiring statement from somebody. Just something on the future. Anything...

Is Rome still burning? Possibly. Maybe all that's left are the embers, or maybe the fire's under control. Whatever. There's still tinkering-aplenty while the focus should be on dousing the building or remaining flames.

There are quick decisions that could and should be made to provide instant stability in the sport. These are the slam-dunks, the blindingly obvious, the ones that should have been done weeks ago; we're talking the awarding of the Junior WRC Championship (nee WRC Academy) to M-Sport (see, more evidence of tinkering - we have a new name for the support series, but no deal for anybody to run it...). M-Sport has supported the Academy like you wouldn't believe for the past two years, and done it brilliantly. To give it to anybody else would be folly and unworthy of the FIA. So do it! Do the deal and announce it.

The next simple solution is for the events themselves: give them some direction, clear, concise direction that's going to make sense for next year and for the next, I don't know, three years. This is called stability, it's a good thing. It will allow the events to plan for the future, attract investment and cement their places on the calendar.

And finally, timing and tracking. What's the sketch there? For a decade or more Stage One Technology has provided both services without - as far as I can remember - a glitch along the way.

Admittedly, the Stage One stuff could do with an update, but it works just fine as it is. And it'll work in the future. Again, let's look longer-term, give Stage One a big deal and investment - the bells and whistles are ready to go. The Spanish-based alternative was touting its wares in Italy last week. The company, rather confusingly called SIT, had issued a tasty-looking dossier complete with TAG Heuer affiliation, a picture of a satellite, plenty of planes and Google maps.

Stage One Technology does a fine job of tracking and timing the cars © LAT

Liking the look of the Spanish frills, I dug deeper and spoke to SIT. There was no news on bringing TAG to the table, they don't own a satellite, and there was a modicum of navel-gazing when I probed the precise nature of their Google agreement. Planes? Yes, they have planes. But they're ranging ageing, piston-engined Cessna 340s against the million-pound-plus, jet-turbine Pilatus PC-12 we're currently enjoying.

I spoke to a perfectly decent and engaging chap called Pedro from SIT. He talked of running the back-up timing system on the Catalunya Rally since 1991, which is great. But is there anything to tell us they can provide this, as well as reliable safety tracking in all countries in the world? Why, oh why, would we be looking to bring the boys benched for one match on in place of those who have been on the park season-in-season-out since 2002?

Maybe the Spanish guys are capable of tracking and timing WRC or maybe they're not. We don't know. But they are, undoubtedly, a gamble. And we have to ask ourselves: is this the time, the place or the right product for a gamble?

Get it? Me neither.

Those are the bankers. Get those deals done immediately and confidence will flow. And with that confidence comes a real appetite to tackle the hardcore problems facing the WRC - those of promotion and television.

Greek tragedy it might have been. Rocket science, it is not.