One of the few ‘side effects’ the arrival of the new and cheerful World Rally Cars is the need of to limit their speed in the sections fastest in the World. Both in Poland and in the Rally of Finland you have opted for the use of chicanes to reduce the instalments to fund and reduce the average speed of the special. However, the use of these chicanes was full of controversy. While the FIA’s fault the promoter of the Rally of Finland and east to the international body for its lack of diligence, the pilots were the ones who suffered in any way the consequences.
the promoter of The Rally of Finland colocó different chicanes artificial in strategic points of the segments faster to avoid special sections of more than 45 seconds with the foot to background. These chicanes, which were built with large straw bales, became however a problem. In fact, the pilots complained during the entire test of the lack of space to be able to stroke them all in the correct way and the difficulty to see the point of entry due to the high-speed to which it competes. In fact, Teemu Suninen by skipping one of these chicanes and correct his mistake he lost his first podium in the WRC.
Analyzed this problem and the limitations of the chicanes as a solution, Jarmo Mahonen as the Director of Rallies of the FIA has been committed in to draft a regulation to be specific and targeted to all promoters of the evidence in the World for everyone to have a pattern unified to establish the chicanes in their sections. This regulation aims to to find a balance to define how and how often space will build these chicanes. The objective is to prevent average speeds as those that could have been in the Rally of Finland and that would have been above 136 km/h.
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