A question of visibility

Take the duvet off your bed and put it over the windscreen of your car. Now get in it and drive. There you go - you're a driver in the World Rally Championship tackling the sixth stage of last week's Catalunya Rally.

Actually, don't do that. It would be silly.

And silly is what most drivers thought the dark run through the Les Garrigues stage was in Salou last Friday. We weren't exactly in unchartered territory here; when the Acropolis Rally organisers ran the Nea Politia stage at 9:30 on a Saturday night in June, there were cries of dark, dusty derision from almost all the drivers. But that was nothing compared with the outrage that greeted the Royal Automobile Club Catalunya on the Costa Daurada last week.

The drivers were incensed at the conditions they had to drive through, with dust apparently making it impossible to see beyond the end of the bonnet.

Minutes were lost and mistakes were made - notably Jari-Matti Latvala's spin, which, since it lost him the lead, did not come cheap.

The problem was the nature of the road. This particular stage ran down into a wooded valley where dust was unlikely to move once it had been disturbed. And four angry Michelins skating across bone-dry Spanish gravel is likely to create dust.

I have to admit I was slightly sceptical when the outrage was first expressed. Running at the front of the field, Sebastien Loeb was largely unaffected and didn't really see the problem. Those behind him went bananas, expressing all manner of criticism at anybody who cared to listen.

The dust was bad, but drivers have coped with it in the past © sutton-images.com

Would, I pondered, those same drivers have been so critical had a big gust of wind arrived just in time to offer them a perfectly clear window of opportunity through which to drive? Probably not.

Was this a case of us paying too much attention to already over-pampered drivers? I was beginning to think so.

A couple of weeks ago on Rally of Scotland, a second run over Drummond Hill was cancelled because it was dark. And raining. My first thought was that this was entirely the wrong decision. These are the best drivers in the world - why can't they manage these conditions?

Fortunately for me, I kept my opinion (formed from the comfort of the press office) to myself. When I happened upon five-time British Rally champion Jimmy McRae and asked what he thought of the Drummond decision, I wasn't sure what to expect.

"One of the best decisions made," said McRae.

Yikes.

Unlike me, McRae had shunned a tea and Tunnocks in favour of driving Drummond Hill in a Group A Subaru Legacy, wipers full tilt as he skated his way across a horrible surface.

Obviously, I agreed with him, wholeheartedly, while inwardly thanking my lucky stars that I hadn't spent my recently written Autosport.com column haranguing drivers for a lack of ambition and the organisers for stepping back from one of the best challenges our sport can pose.

Having done plenty of research into the conditions in Spain last Friday, I now feel in a similar position. Ours is supposed to be the go anywhere, drive anything side of the sport and shying away from that is simply not good enough.

But we have to be realistic these days. When drivers are talking about the potential for going off the road and into spectators and barely knowing about it because they simply can't see, we have to listen. Of course, the histrionics will be heightened by the emotion of the occasion, but the drivers have a point.

McRae Sr went out onto the Scottish stage and agreed it was right to cancel it

As we saw in Jordan this year, two tenths of a second can decide the outcome of a rally and in these ultra-competitive days, we need to level the playing field as much as possible.

In reality, Loeb's necessity to sweep the road at the front of the field probably balanced the benefit he received from running in clear air, so the playing field was level-ish when taking everything into account. And, in those conditions, guess what? Loeb dominated to win his seventh Catalunya Rally.

The Frenchman was, once again, superlative when the weekend's asphalt arrived. With his nearest rival Latvala pushing and pushing to nibble seconds here and there, Loeb rarely looked troubled. He'd always got another gear.

And now he's got an eight-point advantage going into the final chapter of a spellbinding season: next month's Rally GB.

I'll sign off this column on a congratulatory note to Citroen. For the seventh time in nine years, the Versailles manufacturer celebrates being the best in the world. And this year Citroen really has earned the title. The smiling one-liners of the team's pre-season presentation at the top of the year seem a very long way away now. The apparent sense and simplicity of allowing drivers to race each other became commercial naivety that would come back and haunt Olivier Quesnel and his team. Over and over again.

But now, the job is done. Citroen is champion - and on the form Loeb showed in Spain, he will make title number eight in Wales.

Talking of Wales - and going back to your duvet. Bring it to Builth Wells. With all this talk of snow and ice, you may just need it.