The Rally Blog » Rumors

Links of the day: Prodrive back in WRC?

mrwatkins83 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:00:27 +0000

Prodrive quiet on WRC future – After Subaru’s withdrawal from the FIA World Rally Championship, Prodrive has been searching for a way to get back into the game. According to Autosport, technical director David Lapworth is hinting at a possible return but isn’t giving many details. The rumor is a BMW / Mini program.

Race of Champions at Bejing China LIVE – This year’s Race of Champions will be broadcast live on the web through freecaster.tv. The event was broadcast online last year, as well. I was very impressed with the commentary and the quality of the stream, so this year is bound to be better.

Tanner Foust To Represent Team USA At 2009 Race Of Champions – Here’s Foust’s official press release regarding his inclusion in this year’s ROC. Tanner was a competitor last season and made it to the quarter finals. It’d be nice to see a strong performance from the Americans this year.

Todt not excluding FIA role for Vatanen – Jean Todt may have won the election to become Max Mosley’s successor as the President of the FIA, but there are still a lot of grumblings about how it all played out. There has to be supporters of Ari Vatanen out there that are no happy with the result. I wonder what kind of gig they’d offer him?

Rally NY – Chris Duplessis recounts a tough, rainy weekend in New York. The driver sat in the right-hand seat for the weekend.

WRC in the States?

mrwatkins83 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:34:09 +0000

International Sportsworld Communicators (ISC) is looking to expand the FIA World Rally Championship to fifteen events starting in 2011, according to an article on eWRC.cz. This year, the series ran twelve events. The calendar will expand to thirteen rounds next season.

In an interview with Motorsport Aktuell, a German racing publication, ISC boss Neil Duncanson confirmed the expansion and dropped a few hints as to where new rounds could be held. Included in the list was the United States.

The last time a round of the WRC was held in the United States was in 1998. John Buffum finished Olympus Rally third overall in an Audi Coupe Quattro.

Drivers, like Patrik Sandell, have publicly commented on their desire to have a WRC presence here. Still, there is a certain disdain the international rally community has for Rally America and the domestic way of running things. As much as I’d love a round domestically, domestic organizers have a lot of work ahead of them if they plan on submitting a bid. I’ll need to see it before I believe it.

Subaru Rally Team USA defers Block questions

mrwatkins83 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:57:56 +0000

I sent an inquiry to Subaru Rally Team USA’s PR guy regarding the rumors surrounding Ken Block’s future with the Vermont-based team. Specifically, I asked if Block was signed on to contest the 2010 season with SRTUSA. Chris Yandell responded:

No comment other than check out the KB interview from LSPR that Rally America did (on their YouTube channel – You probably already saw it).

ESPN interviews Codemasters’ Matt Horsman

mrwatkins83 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:43:25 +0000

Image courtesy Codemasters

You’ve probably never heard of Matt Horsman, but he’s an important guy. As a lead developer for video game maker Codemasters, Horsman was responsible for ensuring the gameplay for the upcoming rally-themed game DiRT 2 was as dynamic and realistic as possible. From the videos I’ve seen so far, I can’t say there’s ever been a better looking rally game.

Horsman is the subject of a new interview on ESPN. He explains the development process for creating the game, as well as gives a few insights into what we can expect from gameplay. According to Horsman, one of the biggest improvements is the detail now given to the cars.

Now we’ve got real-time reflection maps, so when you’re driving along, you can see the scene on your bonnet and all the flashing lights and the trees. The cars now have twice as many polys than they had before. We have nighttime stages now and a deferred lighting system, which means we can have about 100 different lighting sources on our tracks now. In “GRID,” we only had one — the sun. That’s all we had. For “DiRT 2,” when you’re driving at night on the L.A. stage, you’ll see spotlights that follow the car and fireworks going off. We spent a lot of effort trying to make everything come alive, and I think it shows.

f/t ESPN

Subiesport struggling?

mrwatkins83 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:43:55 +0000

Subiesport, one of the country’s last print publications covering rally, seems to be in a bit of trouble. The magazine is in the midst of a relaunch, but there have been longer-than-usual delays in getting out issue 26. The mag is typically published every other month and has a 6 issue / 12 month subscription rate, but the last issue came out in March – almost four months ago.

The market for print publications has steadily declined over the last few years, and it seems like the recent economic recession might be affecting Subiesport, as well. I’m not putting the magazine on death’s doorstep just yet, but my experience at RWM taught me firsthand the signs of a failing publication.

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