Croatia joins the WRC calendar

Good news, everyone, the World Rally Championship finally reached my part of the world. This has been a major undertaking with many teams and organizers involved over the years. Croatia has been on and off the charts so many times that many, including yours truly, have started losing hope. It looked like yet another could-be that would never turn into will-be. Alas, as we lingered in despair, there were others hard at work and voila, what do you know, the glorious World Rally Championship is scheduled to hit Croatia in 2021.

I am sure you are completely unfamiliar with Croatia and its potential to host a round of WRC, but I can tell you there are so many amazing locations and stunning roads perfectly suitable for WRC cars and crews. Over the last couple of years I have dropped out almost completely from anything and everything motorsport, so I wasn’t really sure which part of Croatia is aiming to become a round of the WRC. Several regions have been involved in The WRC Project and I secretly hoped it would be Zagreb instead of Istria. In an ideal world, both would be included as both have much to offer in terms of motorsports tradition and suitable roads.

But, Croatia is not Monaco and I don’t think starting ramp can be in one place and stages in another, several hundred kilometres away, so based on this video it seems Zagreb will host Rally Croatia next year. Great! Absolutely amazing! With so many exciting stages around Croatian capital, I am sure WRC will have a blast here. That being said, there is one particular stage I would love to see included in Rally Croatia’s itinerary – a superbly exciting 24-kilometre stage on the slopes of Medvednica mountain, just north of Zagreb. This stage is set on a narrow road, half of it is uphill with countless hairpins and the other half then thunders downhill, some very fast yet very technical parts to be found there.

Needless to say, I will be there. This is not something I would want to miss by any chance, even with Covid involved. My only hope now is for world to retain its sanity and motorsports survive the oncoming winter. And then we can all have a great time next April on Rally Croatia.

 

This video shows one part of the mentioned stage. There is another road connecting to the original one at midpoint, it starts on the opposite side of the mountain and is otherwise hosting hillclimb races.

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