Are the 2017 WRC cars really too fast?

The World Rally Championship can relax heading to Poland's high-speed roads this weekend. Those sticks? Grabbed at the wrong end. Messages? Mixed. Confusion reigned.

Earlier this year, the WRC played its own game of Chinese whispers with the speed of these fancy, bells and whistles 2017 World Rally Cars at its heart. Service parks had been rife with chatter of an apparently inevitable stakeholder showdown: the new cars were too fast and stages were going to have to be slowed, went the talk.

Cue tension and more rumours. The events don't want to be told which roads they can and can't use; but the FIA wants to tell the events which roads they can and can't use - not to mention how fast the drivers can drive down those roads. And the drivers? They're not keen on being told how fast they can drive their new motors.

Talking of those new motors? They're clearly too fast, hence the FIA's kneejerk reaction to cancel a seemingly harmless - if quick - stage in Sweden earlier in the year. That was the precursor to the bother.

Chicanes, therefore, are presumably being prepared to be spread liberally across anything remotely resembling a straight piece of road and the governing body is investigating this in an effort to further its soon-to-be-mandated 80mph average speed limit for the all-new World Regularity Championship.

All the above was what service park talk back in Corsica in April would've had you believe. The WRC world went a bit mad back then.

Since then, we've had a run of slower/twisty/rough rallies where the speed debate was less relevant. Now it's back to high-speed roads: Poland this weekend, Finland next on the calendar after that. We'll really see what pace these 2017 machines are capable of. It's time to calm things down a bit, stop being so careless with those whispers and face some facts.

And these facts come from the Finn at the top of the tree: FIA rally director Jarmo Mahonen.

There is no covert agenda to slow down the 2017 World Rally Cars. There's no fear from the FIA that it's created a monster it can no longer keep in its cage. Across the board, there's absolute agreement these cars are safer than anything that's gone before them.

One factory co-driver has said to me: "We've never felt as safe inside the car as we do now. The new regulations have worked very well from that perspective. For example, looking down on the cars from above, you can see how far into the car we sit now.

"We're way further from a potential side impact point than we have ever been before. And the seats and HANS devices are incredible, we're talking real steps forward.

"The concern now is what's going on outside of the car. That's where we need to be working."

Mahonen agrees wholeheartedly and the positioning of spectators remains at the very epicentre of everything he and his team is doing. As it has for the past three years.

And that's the point. The FIA's interest in average speeds is nothing new, it's just another level in the process of a safety overhaul it's been running for some time.

That overhaul has placed Michele Mouton in the role of safety delegate and helped turn two events - Argentina and Portugal - into models of sensible spectating.

The common factor here, of course, is speed. As world champion Sebastien Ogier so eloquently put it: "If you fall over when you are running, it's going to hurt more than if you fall over when you are walking."

The FIA's well aware that speed can hurt, but it's equally aware that speed makes the spectacle and without it, we might as well all go fishing.

Categorically there never has been, and will not be, a new regulation to banish average speeds exceeding 130km/h or 80mph.

As he was recently lambasted as the WRC's very own fun-spoiling curmudgeon, it's worth remembering who it was that got the FIA's 130km/h maximum average rule banished. It was Mahonen.

"I was running Rally Finland at the time," he says, "and in 1997 it was me personally who went to the FIA and proposed the regulation change. I told them this average speed had little to do with safety. The regulation has been taken away and now we'll use it as an internal indicator.

"If we see a stage at more than 130km/h then it's going to flash a light for us and we're going to have a look at that stage. Nothing more. If we think it's dangerous then naturally we're going to have a closer look. The drivers don't have to worry, we're not going to do something totally stupid."

So what happened in Sweden four months ago? There are plenty in the service park who felt the cancellation of the second run at the Knon stage fell into that 'something totally stupid' bracket.

To a man, the drivers said it was boring, but not dangerous. When Ott Tanak took just 13m45.5s to cover 19.63 miles, the alarm bells rang. The Ford Fiesta WRC driver's scratch time had averaged at 85.63mph. The first 15 miles were fast, but fair. But the last bit had an average of 112mph. Now, I'm full of fever and totally see the need for speed, but even for me that's probably a bit quick as an average.

It had been hoped the stage could be shortened, with the rev-limiter-bothering last bit binned instead of the whole thing. But there wasn't time. But how did Mouton not notice this when she did her all-encompassing route survey in the months leading up to the event?

We're going to have to cut the FIA some slack; Sweden was the first loose surface rally for this new generation of cars. We knew they would be quick, we knew they would be up to a second per kilometre quicker, but sometimes it's hard to visualise just how quick. The same mistake will not be made again.

What Mahonen's chasing is a broader approach to this issue. As he's indicated, the average speed has questionable correlation to safety. If that were the case, a 90km/h average in Corsica, for example, would be safe as safe can be - but while its speeds are lower, no one would suggest the narrow Corsica stages with their barriers, drops and bridge parapets are conspicuously safer than a fast gravel road.

As one driver pointed out: "Presumably, when it starts to rain on a rally like Corsica, it must be really, really safe because the average speeds get lower... The only way to deal with the safety of stages is on a case-by-case basis with plenty of common sense."

Mahonen couldn't agree more.

"Common sense is the only way," he says. "We are aware of the speeds rising, you don't have to Einstein to figure out that a lighter car with more power is going to be going through the stages faster than before, but it's ridiculous to think we started looking at the speeds because of these new cars.

"This is part of a much bigger picture for the FIA's safety policy."

Of course the FIA is wary of spiralling speeds, which is why Mahonen wrote to the Rally Finland organisers straight after last year's event. When Kris Meeke averaged 78.68mph for 207 miles between the trees, enough was enough.

Let me offer some speed context, using our very own measure of everything good and great (if ultimately flawed). The average for the 1986 1000 Lakes - an event dominated by Group B titans of mud, thunder and maximum velocity - was: err, 66mph.

Now, I challenge you to dive into YouTube, find some footage of Timo Salonen's Peugeot 205 T16 E2 winning three decades ahead of Meeke's DS 3, and tell me it looks slow, dull and boring. Trust me, I've spent hours pouring over every corner captured on film. It's impossible. Sixty-six miles an hour in those things is speed on a stick.

What's irked Mahonen is Finland's decision to issue a route that, he feels, does little to take into consideration that broader effort at containing those speeds seen last season.

This is where the talk of chicanes came in. If organisers couldn't do the job with the route themselves, the there was a feeling within the governing body that the deployment of a few chicanes - or at least the talk of the use of a few chicanes - would probably do the trick.

They might be right. Rarely have three straw bales demanding the need for a left-right-left or a right-left-right come in for so much grief. The world, it seems, hates chicanes. And Mahonen's among them. He shares the drivers' concerns at the potentially for seeing Ouninpohja obstructed in such a way.

"It's the grand prix on gravel," he says, "and we don't want to lose that."

All chicanes do is force a car to slow down then speed up again. Usually implemented on a straight, they are nothing more than a blunt instrument in an effort to massage a stage's average to something more respectable.

Obviously, a chicane installed ahead of a significant and specific danger - a fresh-air drop on the outside of a corner or such like - is absolutely understandable and the requirement has nothing to do with average speeds.

As a former organiser himself, Mahonen understands the plight of those running rallies at the highest level, but he adds that simply plotting the same route as last season won't wash.

"It's bloody difficult to get agreement on everything," he says. "The organisers are looking through a small keyhole."

The event organisers I have spoken to have put up a stout defence of their route planning policy, with some pointing to a lack of guidance from the FIA with no shortage of wisdom in hindsight.

Personally, I can't see anything wrong with Finland's route and chicanes or artificially tightened junctions would ruin the spectacle of one of the world's most challenging stages. But it's not me who'll be whipping 380 horses into shape to send me down the world's most entertaining rollercoaster.

What do the drivers think?

"Let us drive," is the unanimous and paraphrased view. "Just let us do our job. Yes, there's a concern in Finland for some of the less experienced drivers who might be able to get into a '17 car, but the FIA has that in hand by vetting entries in these cars. Focus, instead, on keeping the fans safe - let us worry about ourselves."

Ultimately, they are the arbiters of their own speed. If they're flying too far, give it less gas.

So, no chicanes; no slower World Rally Cars and no 130km/h maximum. Got that? Good. Now go spread the word ahead of Poland this weekend. Just don't whisper.