"Brilliant" newcomer complicates WRC's calendar puzzle

If ever there was a reason to turn your back on the Andes, this was it. Standing on top of the Pelun stage, staring down into the valley housing the Biobio river runs, was truly a great moment.

And it was just a moment. Moments later, the cloud that completed one of the most staggeringly beautiful views in the history of the World Rally Championship swept in to engulf us. What view? The temperature dropped and everything became just a little bit eerie.

The mountains, the valley and the Pacific, lost to a meteorological flat white.

In a nutshell, that was the inaugural Rally Chile. The Concepcion-based event delivered on so many levels last week, but there were still moments when the mist descended and left the organisers laid bare as WRC first-timers.

There's no doubt Chile brought something fresh and exciting to the WRC. The ceremonial start was exceptional in terms of choreography, delivery, action and atmosphere. For the first time in a long time, Rally Mexico's Thursday night spectacular in Guanajuato's status as the best way to begin a rally came under threat.

And then there were the roads in Chile. The stages were superb and a genuine blend of the styles of Finland, Wales, Australia and New Zealand. Saturday was more taxing on the tyres than some might have expected, but it was worth it for the downhill section near the end of Maria Las Cruces.

But did the varied nature of the roads work against Chile? Talking to drivers in the wake of the event - this is the series' first genuinely new rally nation since Bulgaria in 2010 - I asked them to describe a typical Chilean road.

They couldn't.

"You could say it's fast, but it's not Finland," one reckoned. "It's wide, but then it's narrow as well... It's hard to define Chile."

But could you define, say, Argentina? The roads in Santa Rosa are fast, but sandy and soft - quite the opposite to the rock-strewn, technical tests that lie further north between El Condor and Mina Clavero.

"Yeah, but that's Argentina. You know what Argentina's all about... You couldn't really say the same about Chile."

It's clearly important for drivers to be able to file events away; knowledge and understanding is everything for them. Unpredictability and a step into unknown works far better for you and me than them.

Like any good traffic policeman, he got on his bike and went to help. He didn't consider that it took him onto a live stage

What's vital for Chile is that it debriefs well and learns from the various issues that impacted on the organisation.

It's vital, for example, that all zero cars complete the entire route. Some of the course cars stayed down south around the stages and didn't return to service at lunchtime. As the first crew on the road section, Thierry Neuville and Nicolas Gilsoul found themselves opening gates and explaining processes to marshals on more than one occasion.

When it returned to the WRC last year, Turkey insisted on having an experienced, English-speaking marshal at every control. Chile needs to learn from that.

Everybody was desperate to impress in Concepcion, but that need to please was allowed to cloud judgement too often. Two examples spring to mind. First is the marshal who allowed Neuville onto stage two with the zero car still in the middle of the stage. The Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC would have caught and made mincemeat of the Group N Mitsubishi course car.

But the marshal was given an instruction and he stuck to it. Instead, he should have waited for a green light from the FIA before sending Neuville in.

And then there was the policeman on his motorbike at shakedown. He heard there'd been an accident. He reportedly heard it was serious and just down the road from him. So, like any good traffic policeman, he got on his bike and went to help.

He didn't consider that process took him onto a live stage - mercifully heading in the same direction. He paid the price, coming off his bike after being distracted by the Skoda Fabia R5 that flew past him at race pace.

The policeman thought he was helping.

This is all about education. This is the World Rally Championship, the very pinnacle of this branch of motorsport. Mistakes like this are unacceptable at the highest level, but Chile's excellence in other areas has rightly bought it the goodwill of the service park.

The FIA and WRC Promoter both see the potential of this event and they're both ready and willing to work hand-in-hand to help deliver on the Rally Chile organisers' promise of taking the event to the next level next season.

Overwhelmingly, Chile scored a big tick. Toyota team boss and four-time WRC champion Tommi Makinen is fairly hard to please, but even he was positive.

"It was brilliant," he said. "Just brilliant."

Quite how Chile's achievement of a "brilliant" rally will sit on the other side of the Andes is an interesting one.

Argentina (pictured above) pushed very hard this year to make sure it ran before Chile on the calendar, therefore ensuring it would have its full quota of cars and crews, regardless of what happened on its neighbouring event.

Three weeks on the road, two rallies and a World Rally Car rebuild in a hotel car park in between had taken its toll

That makes no sense for the teams. Argentina is considerably rougher than the roads on the Pacific side of the mountains, so swapping them around would give the teams a far easier ride in the week between.

And should we extend the gap between them? Make it two weeks? Probably. Everybody bought into the whole double-header thing, but there was a feeling that fever for the South American adventure had just about run out in Chile. Three weeks on the road, two rallies and rebuilding machines in a hotel car park in between had taken its toll.

Next year's calendar will be debated at the WRC Commission meeting in Geneva on Friday (earlier than ever thanks to superb work and great cooperation from the WRC Promoter).

While Autosport understands Chile and Argentina will remain on the schedule, with ever-increasing pressure on calendar slots - and the potential eviction of Corsica and Germany to make way for Japan and Kenya - you have to wonder how long two South American rounds fit into a global calendar.

Granted there are still eight European rounds, and in terms of calendar geography this argument has been made from well within the glass house, but North America, China, India and Russia remain the promised land.

And let's not forget, having both Australia and New Zealand was ruled out on the grounds of the nations being too close and without a sufficient car market to justify co-existence (even if NZ had the cash to stay longer-term in WRC, which it doesn't). But the journey across the Tasman between Australia and New Zealand is longer than the trek over the Andes from Carlos Paz to Concepcion.

Asking the drivers to pick between Argentina and Chile posed a genuinely difficult question.

After much thought, the general view was that the roads around Villa Carlos Paz still presented the superior sporting challenge. Commercially it's a different proposition: healthy backing from oil firm Copec places Chile in a far stronger long-term position.

Finances in Argentina have been precarious in the past and, while it pays the bills, it doesn't have the prosperous look of its newly found WRC brother to the west.

Personally, I'd be sad to lose Argentina. I love the people, the place and the passion. A good few folk turned out in Chile, but we're some way off the million-plus who regularly line the Cordoba roads. But at the same time Chile was a real breath of fresh air, with outstanding roads and a can-do attitude.

And who's to say both events shouldn't remain on the calendar for years to come? Both provided superb sporting contests, a sense of adventure and the most amazing imagery. All of which could make them hard to topple when the promoter's full calendar vision shakes out in a few years.