Numerous reforms are planned for the World Rally Championship. Competition organizers are also given more freedom. Kai Tarkiainen opens up about how it can change the World Rally Championship in Jyväskylä.
On Wednesday, the international automobile association FIA announced interesting reforms to the World Rally Championship.
The World Motor Sport Council gave the green light to the WRC working group’s plans. For example, the FIA will give more freedom to the organization of the competition from next year.
The competition must still end with the Power Stage special stage on Sunday, but in the future there may be shorter sprint-type races and longer endurance races.
Maintenance parks will also be reduced, and all maintenance will no longer need to be organized in just one maintenance park in the future. Maintenance can therefore be carried out remotely further away from the actual maintenance park.
Jyväskylä World Rally Championship Director Kai Tarkiainen sees the reforms as good.
– There is a lot of talk about the future format, but I think steps have even been taken backwards here. It has been noticed that we have gone too far from the original DNA of the species. Now let’s look at things that used to be good things and can still be included. The most important thing here is not to forget where you came from, Tarkiainen estimates.
The most recent policies also enable the route of the Jyväskylä World Rally Championship to undergo major changes. According to Tarkiainen, remote maintenance makes it possible to skip some daily maintenance and drive a special test very far away.
For example, would you be interested in taking along an old special exam that has not been able to be organized?
– We will definitely look at those if we find a pattern that works for them. In the old days we drove, not quite from Hanko to Petsamo now, but not much else. When I came to do this event myself, we pretty much went south to Valkeakoski and other places, Tarkiainen answers.
– This opens up the geographical package and takes the pressure off the Central Finland area. We have had to use a lot of the same special tests, because the rules have not allowed us to go much further. This also gives the organizers a break and opens up opportunities for people from a little further away to join.
The position of the pavilion as a central place is strengthened
Over the years, the Paviljongi service park has become the central location of the Jyväskylä World Rally Championship. Tarkiainen also sees the reforms as good from that point of view.
In recent years, the organizers of the World Rally Championship have had to think about the capacity, when the number of cars has increased and at the same time the space in the Pavilion area has decreased due to new apartment buildings and office buildings.
– If the maintenance areas of the big teams can now be made to a reasonable size and the area more usable, I would think that Paviljongi’s position as a rally center will only strengthen. Then all the central functions can be built on the same plot, says Tarkiainen.
Now Tarkiainen is still waiting to see what the final regulations will look like. He still sees the reforms announced on Wednesday as a “concept paper”, from which the actual set of rules will be built.
Basically, the competition director believes that the plans published on Wednesday are good even in the big picture. The decisions will hopefully lead to new car manufacturers entering the World Series.
– The most important thing is that we have now sat down and thought about where things have sometimes gone wrong. The World Series may not be at the level it was 20 years ago. Now we have started to fix those things, says Tarkiainen.