Inside Rally

Breaking News: Loeb Retires on home event

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Daniel Darrall

The 7 times champion, the man who makes no mistakes or gets struck by reliability problems, has retired on the 2nd consecutive rally.

Sebastien Loeb lost ground in the Championship fight last out in Australia after rolling out of the rally, with Mikko 2nd in standing and not far behind, Loeb had to have a problem free rally to keep ahead for the title.

last year in Rally France, he took his 7th world title. That Glory must seem a distant memory. Sebastien Loeb, in a Citroen DS3 WRC, stopped approximately 27 kilometres into stage 3 with a suspected engine failure an has retired from the event, making it the first mechanical retirement since 2007 for Loeb, while Mikko Hirvonen suffered a brief off in his Ford Fiesta RS WRC early in the test as well as team mate Jari Matti Latvala.

There are reports that ex-Formula One world champion Kimi Raikkonen failed to start the stage after he went off the road warming his tyres prior to the start of the run. Raikkonen’s privateer Citroen is stuck in a ditch one kilometre from the stage start with broken front suspension.

Sebastien Ogier now Leads overall.

Posted in WRC | Tagged Citroen, France, Loeb, WRC | Leave a comment

World Rally Championship to pilot live web content during Rallye de France

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Daniel Darrall

Stages from this week’s Rallye de France Alsace will be streamed live and exclusive on the World Rally Championship’s official website, wrc.com, as part of a pilot project to investigate future digital opportunities for the all-action series.

World Rally Championship promoter North One Sport has made a substantial investment in the trial, which will be used to test the latest camera and streaming technology as well as to gauge the appetite among fans for live online coverage and more interactive content.

The pilot is also the first test of a new partnership between North One Sport and digital specialist, Streamworks.

Around 14 hours of coverage is planned, spread across Friday and Saturday’s competition, with the action available to view free of charge on a web media player accessed exclusively from the home page of wrc.com.

The coverage on Friday (30 September) will run between 1300hrs and 2000hrs (local time), with action from Saturday (1 October) shown between 1245hrs and 1930hrs.

On both days content will consist of interviews and atmosphere from the service park and the end of day press conferences. This will be mixed with stage action shot from two helicopters and by cameras mounted inside the rally cars. English and French commentary will be available.

By D.Darrall

“The digital landscape presents numerous opportunities to further expand the reach of the World Rally Championship and this experiment is a big step forward in our plans to develop formats and content to suit,” said North One Sport CEO, Simon Long.

“We have made a significant investment to get the project to this stage and it’s exciting that we are now ready to try and turn the theory into reality; however it’s important to make clear that this is a trial first and foremost and we expect to learn a great deal. This is unchartered territory, both technically and in terms of programming, but it’s a vital stage in our development plans for the next 12 months.”

Posted in WRC | Tagged France, Live stream, Motorsport, WRC | Leave a comment

Ford back to black for France

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Daniel Darrall

‘You can have any colour, as long as its black’. Ford Abu Dhabi team will run its 3 works Fiesta’s WRC cars in an all new, all black livery for Rally France next weekend.

It comes from a test earlier in the year where Ford decided to try out something different and had all its livery in black & white. After the realease of the test footage, rally fans around the world liked the look of it so much that they campaigned for Ford to use it on the next Tacmac rally, even setting up their own facebook group. Despite Ford saying they had no plan to use it but after the high demands for the new look, they have decided to use it for the Alsace event. So look out for the cars of Hirvonen, Latvala and Al-Qassimi.

Sneak preview of the new Black Fiesta in the video by Ford below…