The WRC should have a test of endurance

Midnight was coming way too quickly. The talk turned to alarm clocks.

"I use two," says Mads Ostberg last Friday night in Sardinia. "I need two."

And setting them with a time starting with a four just wasn't going down very well. Being completely honest, it wasn't hard to argue. There had been very little sleep the night before. And clearly, eyes weren't going to be shut for too long in the night ahead.

The frustration got to Ostberg. Maybe it was the hour. Certainly it was the lack of sleep during Rally Italy.

"I just don't see the point to this," he says. "I just don't. We need to sleep and instead we get up so early and go to bed at midnight. We have no choice. I can't think of any other sport that makes people do this. It's fucking stupid. And you can write that. I know you, you will write that!"

As regular readers of this column will no doubt be aware, I quite like the endurance side of the sport. I've always been a fan of the eighties, with five-day rallies spent sleeping in the car, having pot noodles for breakfast. That kind of thing.

I would have argued with Mads. But I was too tired.

Despite the late summer sunset in Italy, drivers like Ostberg were occupied until well after dark © XPB

Without fail, talking to Ostberg is always an interesting, enlightening and entertaining experience. He's an intelligent, business-minded chap as well as a super-quick rally driver - so the follow-up to the emotive stuff wasn't far away.

"If somebody - and those one or two people know who they are - if they could just stand up and tell me why are we doing this, then OK," he says.

"If somebody can stand up and show me the good argument; show me how the television viewing figures are going right up, or how many more people are looking on the internet when we are getting up at five in the morning or whenever, then I can understand this a bit more.

"Otherwise, I think we need to accept we're not doing road rallies here."

Sunday morning was even worse. Granted the hour was later for the cars' arrival into service, but I was pretty much done in.

Problem was, I'd found coverage of Le Mans on the telly in my hotel room and that was that. I loaded up AUTOSPORT.com to compensate for the lack of Queen's English on the TV and put the kettle on. It was a long night.

Watching another day-long epic unfold in the middle of France made me think more about what Mads had said.

Late nights are nothing new for WRC crews © XPB

Volkswagen team principal Jost Capito had added weight to the Norwegian's consideration; the route for last week's WRC round was outmoded and not in keeping with the realities of the modern world. Endurance, Jost reckons, is not 500 kilometres of road section.

Bleary-eyed and befuddled of mind, I'd pretty much given up and made a note to stop living in the past. Because the past has no bearing on the future and in today's modern world, we're only interested in the here, the now. The next 120 seconds and nothing else.

Concentration span? I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain the thinking behind that one. Move on.

And that's where we are with motorsport. We're regularly told by folk clearly challenged in the correct way to wear a baseball cap that rallycross is the future. If it can't be done in four minutes it's not worth doing.

They are so right.

Fans flocked to the podium at the end of 24 hours of racing at Le Mans © LAT

I mean, Le Mans went on for a day (a week, actually...) and look how distinctly unpopular that race remains. I mean, they struggle to get a quarter of a million into the Circuit de la Sarthe. Global reach? Billions, but barely worth bothering with...

Rally Italy winner Sebastien Ogier provided the voice of reason. Had he enjoyed it?

"It was tough," he says, "you know it was hard work in the car, when it was really hot and rough conditions, but this is why we train. OK, we don't want all of the rallies to be like this, but this was a challenge and something different."

Rally Italy general co-ordinator Antonio Turitto understandably took exception to the negativity around what he and his team had tried to achieve.

"We want," he says, "to make this event the European Safari. We want this event to be a challenge and making this rally a challenge will bring out the emotion and the adrenaline in the drivers."

Sorry Mads, but I agree.

And my day was made when Turitto confirmed the organisers will be reconsidering the idea of creating a 50-mile Monte Lerno stage. I love that idea.

Last on the WRC calendar in 2002, Safari was an iconic challenge © LAT

It was at this point that I sought Jari-Matti Latvala, a comrade in arms when it comes to everything old and gold in rallying.

He wasn't sure. Typically, my Finnish friend had thought longer and deeper into this one and - even more typically - he was a step or two ahead.

"Look back in the time," he says, "and we had long rallies, they went on for a lot of time.

But we didn't have such long stages - we had a lot of stages. That was the difference. I think this is maybe the better way forward.

"The problem is for the organisers that they want to run the long stages, but if they have any trouble in the stage and they have to cancel, they're going to lose a lot of the route.

Look at Argentina, we had one stage on Sunday and if there's a problem then it's finished."

Latvala's point raises another, arguably more pertinent point. He's absolutely right, by the way, that the future is more stages not longer stages. The benefit being that spectators can spread out more, meaning we're less likely to have cancelled stages because of overloading corners with fans.

Brilliant.

Overcrowding on stages was in the spotlight in Argentina © LAT

Except it's not. I can sense Rally GB co-ordinator Andrew Kellitt's frustration as he reads these words... marshals. Another start means another finish and another start and finish mean a whole load more volunteers, at a time when we're not exactly overburdened with the kind of folk who help form the backbone of the sport.

When FIA president Jean Todt arrived in power, he came and looked at a round of the World Rally Championship and he was appalled at what he saw. I remember sitting with him in Portugal soon after his election victory and he was clearly saddened at how the sport he'd come so close to ruling on the stages had degenerated into an office-hours outing.

I agreed with him then and I would agree with him now.

But I also understand the need for compromise. No doubt, telly folk will bemoan any kind of a linear route going from town to town, labelling it impossible to film, edit and beam out in the kind of timeframe required.

Sorry, that argument falls down every year a bunch of blokes get on their bikes and ride across France. And we watch Le Tour live, we watch highlights, we watch it on the internet and social media. It's everywhere. And it goes everywhere.

Let's see opportunity not jeopardy.

Granted, I'm not entirely familiar with the nuances of what it would require to take a WRC round on the road, but it's not impossible. It's a long way from impossible. In the words of Markku Alen: "everything is possible." And the great one said that while making a successful U-turn across eight lanes of Turin traffic.

The Hembery-led Pirelli maintains a strong presence in the WRC © LAT

While we're talking Italian, there's more advice - this time from Milan. And Paolo Hembery (Pirelli's Bristol-born Italiano).

"Rallying needs to get in people's way again," says Hembers. "It needs a linear route and it needs to let people know it's there.

"We need to create some traffic jams and generally let people know there's a rally going on. I love rallying, I grew up loving rallying and following the RAC around in the back of a transit van. But now, people don't even know what rallying is. Every year, there's an opportunity to change that."

And Hembery is exactly right. And getting in people's faces doesn't mean driving like a loon or tearing through towns at ungodly hours. World Rally Cars trundling along at 20mph through the middle of urban areas look hugely incongruous; they bring the place to a standstill just by being there. I know... it happened when we took Volkswagen's Race Touareg Dakar machine through Piccadilly Circus on a weekday.

In a matter of minutes, we had reached and exposed thousands more folk to Dakar and rallying than Rally GB could ever hope to achieve.

Broadcasting a modern 'safari' live is cited as an insurmountable challenge by some

But, back to the thrust of the story: endurance rallies. The reality is that the sport needs a variety of events. We definitely don't need a full-time return to the kind of formulaic, cloverleaf itinerary we saw 10 years ago. Easier it might be from a television production perspective, but times have changed and the world can - and must - be entertained in a different way.

For me, there has to be scope for a European Safari - just look at the technical and mechanical challenge that event proved; Ogier and co-driver Julien Ingrassia really earned that one. But at the same time, not every event has to start before sunrise and end shortly before today becomes tomorrow. Some events, for example, could be done in two days.

FIA rally director Jarmo Mahonen has seen this one from both sides. Having organised super-successful Rally Finland, he is now tasked with developing rallying around the world.

Jarmo is only too well aware of an event's need to spread itself out. There was criticism of Rally Italy's long trip down to Cagliari for a mile or so of superspecial last week. Granted, it wasn't ideal, but it took the sport to a good few folk who wouldn't have seen it otherwise (and who knows, one or two of them may go out and buy an i20 or DS 3 now) and it brought event investment from another region.

Wales has hosted Rally GB since the turn of the millennium © LAT

It's vital that rallies escape the dependency on regional funding. Look at Wales Rally GB.

We're all enormously grateful for the millions Wales has invested in our WRC round for the last 15 years, but is the event stronger or weaker anchored in the principality compared with when Lombard or Network Q were behind it and actively encouraging it to move from Nottingham to Chester to London to Birmingham to Harrogate?

Back to the top of the tale, does endurance have a future? For me, it does. It must. But it must come for a reason. Like Capito says, long road sections don't make for a classic event.

Mahonen offers an interesting view.

"Within the FIA's portfolio," he says, "we have the endurance - it's called cross country. And then at the other end, for those who want their sport shorter, we have rallycross and in the middle we have rallying."

One thing's for sure, Le Mans will live forever. It's rarely the best race of the season, but every one of them comes with a sense of achievement and a sense of occasion.

When Ogier jumped into the Alghero harbour to celebrate victory on one of the toughest, longest and hardest WRC rounds in years - ironically at the same time Porsche 919 #19 was crossing the line at la Sarthe - those same sentiments held.