Subaru seems to be close to a confirmation of a challenge in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge with their group N version of the Impreza rally car. I love the IRC and the news is of course really good for them – since it in principle means beating the WRC when a team leaves the WRC to join the IRC just a few months after.
However, there is one problem… And that is that it underlines the development of rallying going to a mode where drivers have to pay to drive – not the opposite. I guess Subaru sees this as an opportunity to get exposure in a large, international rally championship that is cheaper than the WRC – but on top of that they wont have to pay everything themselves. Few of the IRC drivers are paid to drive, and I’m quite sure Subaru looks forward to recruit drivers paying for their participation in the team. Quite a difference to the Subaru World Rally Team where Petter Solberg got paid more than 6.000.000 € per year.
That’s the danger with the IRC and also with the new Super2000 regulations of the WRC. In a short term perspective, we can get more manufacturers into the championships and into rallying by reducing costs. But in a long perspective – will it be positive to the sporting values to have the best paying drivers in the championships instead of the best driving? I don’t think so, and I think the risk is obvious. Don’t get me wrong – with the right implementation it can be really good, and I think Super2000 is the only realistic way to go for the WRC. But anyway, that’s why I’m split considering a Subaru entry in the IRC – even since I would love to see the cars competing…
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Tags: intercontinental rally challenge, IRC, subaru, subaru world rally team, super2000
How many drivers in the WRC are getting paid?
An interesting issue. I believe this situation stems from the modern view of human resources as the biggest cost generator (and thus the first to be cut down) in any organization. The difference is that, while professionals like engineers and executives don’t see their job as something worth doing without getting paid, drivers do. Motorsport as an industry would not exist if they didn’t.
Right now, it seems like “the bubble has burst” on the rallying world. A market bubble where carmakers bought into what they perceived as an investment with high potential returns. To realize those returns they needed to beat everybody else, so they spent money like crazy trying to do so; in this decade Citroën, and to an extent Ford, were able to translate all that investment into fantastic branding, but their success has become their downfall as they’re now completely alone in the race for the championship. F1, the WRC, DTM and other series have experienced this cycle before. As with all bubbles, value for everyone has gone down the drain, which keeps most newcomers away and drives underperforming investors out.
But reality is that you have to spend to win, and that very same trend of trying to turn paid drivers into paying customers will force manufacturers and teams to invest in the development of their cars, as people will naturally want to take their money to the team with the best car. Conversely, in order to drive demand for their services and get better value for their marketing money, factories and teams who want to be seen as competitive will almost always need to sacrifice some money to get better drivers for their cars. A cycle will develop, and eventually paid drivers will return.
The question is when, and this is where the FIA and ISC are doing a really bad job, IMHO.
Is it correct to say that the drivers “pay to drive”? The real situation is that the drivers managers have to get the driver sponsors so that he can drive.
It’s not like e.g. Henning Solberg is paying “with his own money” so that he can drive for Stobart/Ford. He has sponsors.
With such solution maybe even more drivers have the possibility, because as long as there is money to set up a team, in other words they have sponsors, they can get a car and compete. If they are doing well they can get better sponsors and then have more to use on cars etc. The car manufactures get a production of cars and is willing to sell more modern cars to more teams.
Even so, to get noticed to be able to get a factory WRC-seat, there need to be a lot of money spent. Basicly you have the same economic solution now in wrc as you have on the national championships. This is also the same with almost every other motorsport-gene.
CM, I don’t agree with you. First off, even if you would be totally right it would mean that the selection is more based on money and less made on talent than today – while I want the different thing with more talent and less money even on lower levels.
But, besides that – I don’t even think you’re right. You can always say that it’s sponsors that pay and that the managers should do the work, but reality is that the drivers have to do very much work themselves (which although could be OK). However, the main “fault” in your theory is that you consider the sponsor money as one single pot only used for renting a car. But it’s not! Being a driver able to perform in high levels of rallying requires having it as a full time work – and then you need to survive. And where do you get your salary? From sponsors… This means that when you say the sponsors pay, it’s the same thing as saying that the driver pay – and the opposite. It’s one pot of money.
I think many drivers cannot – or don’t want to – pay those amounts of money to drive – especially in a longer term. Those one who will be paying wont be the most skilled – but the richest. One easy example of why it’s not good is by comparing countries. Big countries with where rallying is a long tradition also in business can easily get a lot of talents – because the talents get adequate support (read “Finland”). In other countries, where other sports are considered more “modern”, it can be close to impossible to seal a full drive (read for example “Sweden”). To get 3 million euros for rallying in Sweden is maybe not impossible – but very close to.
That’s what I think…