It’s still nearly six months away, but the leading drivers in the World Rally Championship will already have a close eye on one of Rally New Zealand’s intricacies.
Road position.
The jostling for road position first became a thing at Rally Australia in the 1990s. Western Australia’s diabolically slippery gravel handed a big disadvantage to the driver running first on the road.
In WRC terms, New Zealand comes in a strong second.
It’s fair to say that in national events being the first car on the road – the road sweeper – isn’t such a big disadvantage. Generally that driver is the quickest man with the fastest car, so any sweeping can be overcome by other measures.
Not in the WRC though, where the cars are so evenly matched that stage times can be within tenths of seconds after 30+ kilometres of twisty, gravel roads.
As the accompanying photos from Rally New Zealand in 2010 perfectly illustrate, there is a massive difference from running first car on the road (Ogier – main picture) to being two or three cars further back (Hirvonen).
Ogier’s Citroen is struggling to push away the slippery gravel, while Hirvonen’s Focus is literally down to the bedrock on a tarmac-like surface.
It’s not hard to see that one driver is going to have a significant grip advantage, which should relate to a much faster stage time.
The WRC rules dictate that the current championship leader starts day one of a rally as the first car on the road. This is great if you’re on dry tarmac, but on slippery gravel it can be a real disadvantage – perhaps as much as a minute in time loss on the first day alone.
Then, come day two, the top 10 is reverse seeded, so if you’ve dropped back to the lower half of the top 10, you have to do it all again on day two.
Ott Tanak, Elfyn Evans, Seb Ogier and Thierry Neuville would all love to be leading the WRC come September, but with the potential for big time losses in New Zealand, don’t be surprised if they’re happily third of fourth in the standings as they head down under.
In a perfect world, however, any one of them would be far enough in front in the WRC title race by then that they could afford to take a hit from running as car one. If only.
Team tactics leading up to, and at Rally New Zealand, may become even more likely as the event draws nearer.
It’s a Catch 22 that nobody has the perfect solution for – yet.
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