World Champion Sébastian Ogier has made his feelings on road position clear. He doesn't like the current rule implementation one bit. Why? Because on some events, he feels disadvantaged, running as he does as Car #1 on every rally these days.
For those who aren't familiar with the rule, suffice to say that the start order of the Priority One (P1) drivers is determined by their current championship rank. So when Rally Mexico begins, the following order will apply:
1: S Ogier
2: A Mikkelsen
3: M Ostberg
4: H Paddon
5: D Sordo
...etc...
Current regulations dictate that Championship Order will apply to an event's Thursday (assuming the organisers have competition scheduled on the Thursday - not a given), Friday and Saturday. Sunday, however, uses a reverse order start, where competitors not competing under Rally 2 line up with the car lowest in classification rank first off the line, through to the highest-classified driver, who starts last of the P1 competitors not running under Rally 2.
Now we've got that out of the way, onto the ramifications of the rule.
The WRC is made up of mostly gravel-based events - Mexico, Argentina, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Finland, Wales and Australia.
There are four rounds based on sealed roads - Monte Carlo, Germany, China and France.
Spain also fits the "sealed surface" mold for the most part, although its first day traditionally has a mix of gravel stages and gravel/tarmac stages, so it doesn't fit quite so neatly into the other categories, but since by far the bulk of its competitive mileage is on tarmac, I'd include Rally Spain in the "sealed" category personally.
And there's the most recent rally, Sweden, which runs on snow and ice, which is (and should be) in a category of its own.
What sticks in M. Ogier's craw, is that as Car #1, he has the displeasure of sweeping loose road metal from the gravel stages which costs him time to the crews behind him, and in order to mitigate that time loss, the Frenchman is under pressure to take greater risks than he would take otherwise.
Basically then, Sébastian sees himself as disadvantaged on eight of the WRC rounds. Nine if you include Spain, but under the circumstances, I don't see any compelling reason to do so and I'll stick with eight as the defining number of "disadvantage" rounds.
However, since most of the rounds repeat their stages in the afternoon, what was a disadvantage to Car #1 in the morning loop generally becomes an advantage in the afternoon loop, as the roads cut up from the passing of each car.
The opposite applies pretty much with the sealed stages, Car #1 having pristine surface to compete on in the morning loop with the surface becoming compromised with each passing car cutting and dragging mud, rocks, dirt and such onto the road. However, the condition of the road surface changes little when the loop is repeated, with everybody managing virtually the same conditions. So the balancing out that we see on the gravel stages doesn't really take place on the sealed ones.
And of course, the reverse order start positions on Sunday further level the playing field.
So at this point, rather than Car #1 (Ogier in this scenario) being disadvantaged, on balance it's neutral or perhaps a modest advantage. Sweden is the orphan here - when the Swedish rally is delivering its "normal" conditions, good depth of snow, snowbanks, temperatures below zero and so on, road position is more or less equal in terms of advantage. Even on the most recent "abnormal" Swedish round, Sébastian seemed to be in receipt of some very advantageous conditions as Car #1 although clearly not always. I'd say it was a wash.
One intersting wrinkle that has emerged from Rally Sweden though relates to another competitor entirely. Haydon Paddon has benefitted from his relatively low road position on past events, something that has not gone unnoticed by the WRC media, bloggers and fans alike, with an undercurrent of questions regarding Paddon's ability to compete without such benefit.
Indeed, Hayden himself has been quick to acknowledge road position and stage conditions as factors in his outstanding performances last season and now in 2016. As a result of his superb 2nd place in Sweden, Hayden currently has a championship classification of 4th, meaning he'll start Rallye Mexico just 3 cars behind the World Champion. So it will be educational to discover how competitive the Kiwi ace can be against Ogier, when his road position is no longer seen as a factor in his pace.
No pressure Hayden. All I can add is... "Roll on Mexico".
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