Did part of rallying die in Mexico?

Less is more. But is it really? I thought not. I honestly thought more was more. But now I'm not so sure. Between you and me, I fear endurance rallying might be finished.

Yes, yes, I know Dakar, East African Safari, any number of cross-country events. What I'm talking about is endurance in the World Rally Championship. It just doesn't seem to work anymore. And that makes me sad.

In all honesty, this has been coming for a while. I remember going to talk to Markko Martin at the end of the first day of the 2002 Safari Rally - his first attempt at the Kenyan classic. He'd done four competitive sections, a smidge over 200 miles between the lions in his Ford Focus RS WRC 02.

I was excited to talk to this long-distance rookie, to see what he thought of his newfound adventure. Have you ever seen Markko's withering look? It's very good.

I was invited to go away and come back with a sensible question. He wasn't a fan. Didn't really see the point.

Last week's Rally Mexico contained one stage which was longer than two of those Kenyan competitive sections: Guanajuato, as near as dam it 50 miles.

Again, I was really quite excited about the prospect - so much so that I tackled the stage the day before the event in Autosport's Hertz-backed Volkswagen Jetta. It was epic. Quick, slow, twisty, quick, jump, village, jump into a village.

Classic, I thought.

Naturally, the only place to be on Sunday morning was the end of said long one. Ready and waiting for carnage to come down the road. I was disappointed. Not that I wanted carnage. But a bit of sweat and a broken wheel, maybe even a gearbox jammed in third or a front-wheel-drive World Rally Car or two. The best/worst we got? Zero-car with off-side rear-bumper damage.

And, first man on the road, Eric Camilli looking about as tired as he does when he ties his shoelaces.

The boys, it seems, are too fit for 50 miles. Hayden Paddon: "I'd happily turn around and do it again."

Genuinely, there was barely a bead of sweat between them.

Fortunately, Paddon had come up with the goods. He loved the stage and loves the idea of endurance rallies, pointing to the need to drive with one's head as well as hanging one's balls out all the time.

Had he been there, I suspect Kris Meeke's attitude would have been similar. Remember his reaction to the original plan for Corsica to open with a dark 50-miler? It was a big grin.

I worried that things were going slightly awry when Jari-Matti Latvala suggested 36 miles might be better than 50. And then Mads Ostberg arrived.

Did you enjoy that?

"No. Why would I?"

Enough's enough.

I sought out Patrick Suberville, the man responsible. Suberville's a brilliant maverick of a rally organiser, just the sort of thorn in the FIA and WRC Promoter's side we like. He's a non-conformist who likes to challenge the established order. Not to mention drivers on his rally.

Entirely confident he was about to tell me it would be two 50-milers next year, or maybe a 100-miler to open Friday morning, was it same again in 2017?

He started laughing and didn't stop for quite some time.

"No. Definitely not. You should have been in rally control on Saturday night..."

His team had delivered a brilliant and faultless 50 miles. But it had taken its toll.

So, that's it then. No more longness.

That's music to the ears of WRC Promoter's Oliver Ciesla. The promoter absolutely doesn't see the point of long stages. Especially not on a Sunday.

I could kind of see his point in Mexico. The powerstage is the WRC's telly payday, it's what folk tune in for on a Sunday afternoon. And what's the main thing needed to make it happen? Cars, of course.

The last thing Ciesla wanted was a potential car-killing monster of a stage right before showtime. It won't happen again.

And it won't ever happen in Europe. The FIA hierarchy - led from the top by that most traditional of endurance-loving traditionalists, president Jean Todt - is keen on seeing events outside of Europe try something different and longer.

But to try to do the same on most European events simply wouldn't work. Putting so many of your miles in one stage would cause significant spectator trouble, with everybody trying to get to one test and possibly one place on one road.

Even if you do manage to get everybody into one place, the sheer volume of people then brings the safety aspect into question and an organiser's simply unwilling to stare down the barrel of losing 20 or 25 per cent of its mileage in one hit.

And then there's the fans. Shiny people who wear their hats the wrong way around and spend a lot of time on skateboards tell us that this generation has an even shorter attention span than the last one.

This is not good news. Don't forget, the last generation is the one watching every ad break speeded up 32 times because... well, because, who has time for adverts?

So, asking these folk to sit through 50 minutes of stage is just not going to happen. They can't possibly sit for so long without some sort of social media interaction from the driver telling them they're clear of the stage.

They couldn't possibly flick to the splits' webpage and try to analyse for themselves who might have taken the soft tyre or who's on the hard.

Personally, I find the prospect of such a journey into the unknown fascinating and irresistible. For me, it's what our sport's about.

Every such stage tells a story all of its own. Or maybe the story's always there, it just takes a little bit more digging out.

That was what I thought. Firmly thought.

Until last Sunday. A crowd of us huddled at the end of the stage. Rallying's hardcore. The very folk for whom the 50-miler was made. There was plenty of pontification along with a general acceptance that all hell was about to break lose.

Then it didn't. Nothing happened.

So, maybe we're wrong. It's not only the drivers and co-drivers who have this challenge licked, but the cars are clearly up to it as well. I don't remember a single potentially rally-ending issue for one of the cars.

Undaunted, somebody suggested running super-long gravel stages on a Friday. Or a Saturday, when there's still something to fight for. Somebody else said we should suggest that idea to Sebastien Ogier. Instead, we all got in our cars and drove back to service, mostly thinking that the end of endurance is nigh.

Ciesla tells me endurance is covered off in the World Rally Championship without massively long stages. He's wrong. It's not. Take Mexico and, to a lesser extent Sardinia, out of the WRC and what have you got? A handful of formulaic sprint events, organised by teams increasingly afraid of WRC Promoter's big stick or falling foul of the FIA.

There are the sort of rallies which can and do deliver the social media hit. And the current generation of crews are increasingly tailored to this style of driving.

By happy coincidence I spent some time with Stephane Peterhansel earlier this week. He's not bad at long-distance rallies. Twelve Dakar wins or something... I asked him the secret to endurance.

"Never being the fastest," he said with a grin. "Always keeping that little bit back for the danger."

Pacing yourself.

Sadly, it's a dying art.