RDRC S3 Rally World

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Championship is rolling into next season, Sebastien Levret upholds the title!

Welcome back after long, long time of hopeless waiting for any report! But we gave you our word, and what rallye fan we would be if we didn't observed it? So, make some coffee and do some time for our press!

After round 6, it was already decided who will be the rightful champion of the second season. Sebastien Levret won the round and increased his lead with difference of 65 points to 2nd place. With only two rounds remaining, he could start celebrating. "Of course I am happy for that," he said. "But next rallyes lose the meaning of fight for the title. First season was closer and I had to fight till the last event. Nothing is pushing me to win now but the honor. I can assure my fans though, I won't let up." Ludovic Cogotti finished behind Sebastien and remained in fights for the vice champion. A disaster event for Jakub Sulej, who ended out of the scoring far far behind. Thanks to him, Attila Kiss jumped to 2nd place in the overall standings even though he didn't participate this time.

It wasn't similar in Champions League. Current leader Norbert Leitner haven't shown up. This let the door for the title opened. Roy Magnes did pretty well and took the first pace and what is more, 3rd overall, slowly but surely caching Norbert. He jumped to 2nd place in the standings in front of Yann Laprevotte, who finished 4th, also scoring overall.

Teams standings are expectedly leaden by Project D, not threaten by anyone. Close battle is between 2nd-4th. JME/Coke Zero, Ford Team Poland followed by Nijo Rally. They are pressed into 7 points difference.

Round 7 took us into overgrown tropical forests of Japan. Sebastien again dominated and was the fastest driver in 10 of 14 stages, which is 70% of the rallye. Jakub again finished down the field with no right for points and got down to 4th in the standings. "It's real suffer. I can't get the car working how I need to and we are not well coordinated with the team. But I am not blaming anyone for it, it's just bad times and I trust we can get better before last round where I am aiming for the win." With Attila again missing, Simone Demi replaced him in the overall standings after finishing 3rd just behind Dariusz Swiderski, who performed great 2nd position.

Champions league experienced surprise of the season. Roy Magnes didn't let anyone be faster than him and captured the win. Who made remarkable results was Ondřej Kapal, finishing 2nd in the class and 6th overall, only 7 seconds behind Roy. "It's incredible, I can't still believe it. I never stand on podium in such a brilliant competition, not even scored overall. I just hope I will stay with my new performance in the upcoming events. Special thanks to my team, who prepared my car perfectly!" Kevin Hopkins finished 3rd, getting close to Nigel Atkins in the overall standings. Norbert Leitner haven't shown up again, which leaded to very interesting last round, where should be decided, who takes unpopular 4th place, who bronze, silver and gold!

Last round, 8th in a row, Vauxhall Rally of Wales had to decide vice champions in both leagues and title carrier in Champions. By example from last season the final was grandiose, even with already known champion Sebastien Levret. SuperSpecials were sold out, parking were full, broadcast were online all around the world and stages were overcrowded by spectators. The atmosphere was just outstanding. But stop talking around and lets take a look at the race itself!
At the start was waiting for a green lights Sebastien Levret, who was expected to win. But who bet on him, did wrong. Jakub Sulej, after his disappointing results last events began with the fastest time. Then real fight started. They were both changing their places and the fastest times, but in the end, Jakub was more successful. "It's big honor to me beat such an icon of rallye in such a conditions. But I wasn't wondering even for a while that this time I would provide bad results. The worst is behind us and it can be only better!" This performance made him, like in previous season, vice champion, losing 85 points to Seb. This time, we could see Attila Kiss in his Škoda WRC cruising trough stages, but he shamed himself and ended down the field, 30th. Tor Anders Berven was after few events finally visible and finished behind Seb, 3rd. Thanks to Attila's bad result, Simone Demi took final bronze after his 4th place.

Norbert Leitner arrived at last to hold his lead. And so he did, even though he finished only 3rd after Keegan Buckley's disqualification, it was still enough. "Thanks everyone who arrived to support me. Mostly my fans, they have my recognition, because they waited there for me, even in this bad weather. I am deeply touched!" He almost cried. Nigel Atkins finish first in the class though. "That's what I call sweet dot behind this season," he laughed. Roy wasn't the fastest this time, but he managed to stay 2nd overall and is Champions class vice champion. Yann Laprevotte ended far behind, and lost his bronze in good of excellent Nigel.

It is fair to mention how it ended when it comes to Teams. It ended exactly how it was mentioned, Project D first with big gap of 110 points, second JME/Coke Zero, third Ford Team Poland and fourth Nijo Rally.

It was long, hilarious, hard and very expensive season. We visited tarmac stages, gravel stages, mix of mud, snow and ice, places with hot and tropical weather. Popularity still grows up, newcomers are more frequent.
"I am very pleased with the second season and how it went. Many thanks to organize team, sponsors and mostly all those fans, it wouldn't be rallye without you. I hope next season, with a lot of changes to make the rallying more comfortable and accessible for bigger amount of drivers, will be as successful as this one. We are planning some more tropical events, more technique and fast ones." says Rick Bamford, the main director of RaceDepartment Rallye Championship. And what exactly the changes are? Let's review them.

1. New classes:
Because season 2 experienced unexpected large interest, it was decided to extend the classes,
2. Driver grading system:
To keep new, unskilled drivers in competition of their level, it was decided to sort them by their skills. Better results will affect in moving up trough the grade until the star class, driving WRC cars.
3. Parc Fermé
Excessive cutting will be reviewed and punished.
4. New stages
New stages will be driven to add variety.

That and much more!

First round starts pretty soon and to introduce it, we asked as usual Rick Bamford.
"Round one once again sees our crews return to the snow and ice of Rally Norway. The fast flowing roads of the scandinavian region always provide close fights and enthralling battles. Warmer tempretures than previous seasons will provide a new and added challenge.

Starting again with the Pribum stage though town, the crews will then move to Mustaselka and Mlynky in the mountains. Repeating these stages in the after noon. Fog will be an issue in the low level Pribrum, but good weather will return for the rest of the day. At this time of year, night falls early meaning that the second pass of Mustaselka will be run in the dusk before full night comes for the daunting Mlynky stage.

Day 2 starts with Kaihuvaara, Sikakama and Autiovaara before midday service. The second pass of these stages will be more mud and ice than snow as the whole field cuts though the surface. care will need to be taken as the road edges are now packed ice and are no longer forgiving to wide lines and corner cutting. It will provide very different stages to the first pass.
"

One sad note to the end, we had a talk with Sebastien Levret about his participation in the third season. Unfortunately, he had and argument with his main sponsor chief and couldn't subscribe contract to extend his agency. "I can't drive in conditions, which they proposed." With his experience and results, it wasn't hard to find another sponsor, but they won't be ready with the car until late rounds, so Seb decided to stay out of this show this time and give another talent a chance to be a champion. "At least, the motivation will be bigger in fourth season," he added with smile on his face.

But that's really all for now. We will be back after first round is done with news, results and reviews. Get ready, it starts this week! See you soon.
 
Someone caught a sneak glimpse of the new Team Terror Australis Peugeot 207 while it was on it's first shakedown run. Rather than risk exposure in the local Aussie tracks, they headed off to the USA but spies there still found them.

Don't know about the driving skill, but the new paintwork from Damien looked great.

[video=youtube_share;w2FlpfC4HPY]http://youtu.be/w2FlpfC4HPY[/video]


Expect Damien to do a formal "Launch" in the near future. :wink:
 
Some random footage from Round 1 - Day 1, nothing too fancy.

Haven't done these in a while, excuse the shoddy workmanship. Forgot to fade out at the end, and couldn't stand another hour and a half of rendering just because of that. Hope you won't mind much.



Since there was a lot of replays, I didn't even try to watch them all. I used your rally reports to detect interesting bits. If there was no report, I checked the times, and picked a stage or two. If something fun is missing here, that's because you haven't mentioned it, and I haven't seen it :tongue:
I am open to any and all suggestions :thanks:

Also, big thanks to Damien for the spiffy name tags, they look great in my opinion. :thanks:
Hope I got all the names and flags right :redface:
 
Excellent video Senad, well put together.
Plenty of fun material there too, those bloody barrels took no prisoners, did they. :eek:

Love the name plates from Damien, very nice addition. :cool:

EDIT: Look who just made their 10,000 th post. :work:
 
Great video! I had a blast watching it, and I will admit to laughing when everyone kept smacking the barrels on Pribram only because I did it a ton in practice and can sympathize with them.

Can't wait to see Day 2, or the rest of the season for that matter.
 
Cheers all, and congrats Warren :fwd:

Somebody didn't like it :frown:
Constructive criticism is always welcome. The crappy text and fancy name tags don't really match well, but me doing voiceover work would not be a good thing, LOL. Anything else?
 
If you want, I could do voiceover for the next round :) I have already made ca 20 RBR-summaries and am commentating some live online races every now and then :)
About the nametags - I think you missed the flag on Yann Laprevotte, other than that it looks good :)
 
If you want, I could do voiceover for the next round :) I have already made ca 20 RBR-summaries and am commentating some live online races every now and then :)

Yeah, the trouble there is that my upload speed is sloooow. Took me 5 hours to upload the video above.

Although, I could upload the video to Dropbox, you could download it, add the voice-over, and you could upload it on youtube? Might be worth a shot.

About the nametags - I think you missed the flag on Yann Laprevotte, other than that it looks good :)
Yeah, and Chris Williamson and John Cunningham. Was intentional, their surnames were too long, it didn't look good.
 
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