Rally Germany makes history, issues official tabards to idiots?

This should be how your rally can lose its World Rally Championship event status, easily. Rally Germany has some of the most challenging roads and breathtaking vistas, but in terms of competitors, spectators and accredited (my favourite part) media safety, it’s lacking. Day one could have easily ended up in tears or worse. I hear you, so can any other day on any other rally anywhere in the world, but I’m not going to buy that argument this time. There are, again, no excuses for people wearing official tabards to stand on the end of a fast straight going into a hairpin. I apologize if, in this video, things “wearing” bright green tabards aren’t people, but I somehow think they are.

Disclaimer: due to work and other commitments, I wasn’t able to follow every stage (again), minute by minute, and of course I missed the first ones (and last one) completely. Therefore I have no idea whether anyone was injured in one of these incidents or not, but situations such as this should really stop happening in the WRC.

If promoters are, by any chance, looking for additional criteria in judging which event should be dropped from 2016 calendar, here’s one. Criteria: stop tolerating stupidity and start putting safety first.

Yes, oh yes, I hear you shouting loudly “but marshalls cannot be everywhere and idiots will be idiots no matter what you do”. Not true, you can cancel stages and keep doing that. Or risk it, have a tragedy and deal with that instead.

And this is from the archives, same event.

Marko, thanks for the tip.