WRC remains World RALLY Championship, shoot-out is dead!

Personally, I was THIS close to accept that maybe, in some wild parallel universe, this shoot-out thing should have a chance at least. A chance to fail miserably, because nothing else would ever come from it, I am 200% sure of that. Nothing but a short-term benefit of “wow” factor, without any real gain to the sport and its players. Well, maybe it would gain some cash to the “players” but at what price? There is, no doubt, a truckload of politics behind all this, but I for one do not care about that. It felt wrong to be behind this stupid idea, and no matter how many times those in favour of destroying the nature of the sport spoke positively about the shoot-out, the fans spoke against it. There was no point, no sense, no essence in what WRC Commission, Mr Capito and Co. were suggesting. Just no. So much time, wasted. They were told by thousands upon thousands of fans that this idea of theirs was bad, yet they insisted on it. We rarely heard anything else, shoot-out was their main thing. The only thing? So much time, so much energy, gone.

But let’s not get all negative and stuff. No, let’s not. Because it’s time to be positive, actually. The thing is dead, the witch is dead. FIA rejected it and that means that whatever concept of shoot-out existed should now be forgotten, hopefully forever. Sport definitely needs promotion and needs changes, not so much in core format but in the way it’s presented, covered and introduced. Rally was never really broken on the inside. WRC+ proves it, hopefully. Make existing format more engaging (award stages, kill splits, etc.) instead of crashing through the door with an axe, smashing the very heart of the sport.

And so, in case you needed an extra reason to raise a glass this evening, here’s one. Good riddance, shoot-out thing.

Article on Autosport.com has a few more bits of info.