There has been news circulating about a possible merger between the World Rally Championship and the Intercontinental Rally Challenge. Manufacturer numbers are down in the WRC – and have been for some time – while IRC entries are booming.

There are more than 120 cars signed up for the IRC Barum Czech Rally on August 26-28, while more than 200,000 people are expected to watch the asphalt action. Not only that, but the IRC has great TV coverage courtesy of Eurosport, which owns the series. If you were Jarmo Mahonen, the WRC Commission president, then a merger would make sense. It obviously does, because he’s the man pushing for it.

However, before I get too cynical about the reasons why, it is worth taking a step back. As some of you may have seen, I’ve been writing a series of articles in the magazine called ‘Motor Racing’s Money Tree’. We’ve broken down all the single-seater championships and then placed them on a tree with Formula 1 in the canopy and Formula Ford down by the roots. We’ve tried to explain how they all fit in together and it seems to have made sense to at least a few people.

The idea was then put forward of doing a similar thing for rallying. But there’s no way you could neatly place the ‘rallying ladder’ on a tree. It would be ‘Motor Racing’s Money Bush’. It is chaos. And that is what Mahonen (below) is keen on trying to address. He wants a system whereby talented youngsters can race in the IRC and then move up easily to the WRC.

It sounds good, but something the IRC is well known for is its atmosphere and, as current Peugeot driver Guy Wilks (below) put it, “character”. Would this be lost if it was taken under the arm of the WRC?

“In the WRC, because of the manufacturer money, there are only so many drivers who are capable of winning a stage, let alone a rally,” Wilks tells me while doing PR for ‘The Go-Kart Rally’. “In the IRC, if you look at the stage winners this year, you have a long list of names.” You do. So far this season, after six rallies, there have been 13 different stage winners. In the WRC, after eight rallies, there have been eight different stage winners.

“I’m really enjoying the IRC because it’s all about the challenge for the driver,” adds Wilks. “The championship has got character and we’ve got a fantastic array of rallies, from the beautiful scenery and countryside in Scotland to the mountain stages in Corsica. There’s also Monte Carlo and even the plains in the Czech Republic.”

On the Monte Carlo Rally the IRC has a stage in the dark up the Col de Turini. It’s a feast for the senses and, for me, it’s what the WRC is lacking – real drama.

“The spectators can get really close to the drivers and the cars; they’re not penned in like in the WRC. Even in the service area for that matter. It’s got a family feel, everybody mixes in and gets involved and that’s reflected in the number of spectators. In Ypres and Barum the service areas are absolutely jam-packed.”

Former FIA president Max Mosley didn’t do a huge amount for the WRC, but now that Jean Todt is in office things may well change. He’s got a history in the series, having been a World Championship navigator from 1973-81, and the fact that he has already sorted a World Endurance Championship for next year can only bode well.

Longer and more challenging stages, fewer remote service areas, tests run at night… Let’s make a WRC round a proper event. Yes, try and create a legitimate ladder system for the sport, but let’s not lose any of the atmosphere that goes with the IRC. The last thing we need is a rallying equivalent of the rather unexciting GP3 championship.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

A new era of sports car racing kicks off in Florida on Saturday. The Sebring 12 Hours marks the return of what should be classified as a World Championship of Makes – even if we’re not allowed to officially call it that.

The tough enduro is much more than just the first round of the American Le Mans Series this year. It also counts for something that calls itself the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, a seven-round global series for sports cars which includes the Le Mans 24 Hours itself. Last year’s three-race pilot series was a toe-in-the-water exercise. Now it’s for real – and even though a title with an acronym as meaningless as ILMC will mean little to the world outside the paddock, the manufacturers are taking it very seriously.

That’s because they know this is the start of something that should be very big. The series is the brainchild of Le Mans organiser the ACO. The target now is for the FIA to embrace the series and give it the World Championship title it so fully deserves.

Audi Sport boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich summed up the feelings of everyone in sports car racing this week when he said during a press conference: “The ILMC means nothing outside this room. We need a World Championship and we need it quickly. Not in five years, but in two or three.”

There were nods of agreement from the rest of the panel beside him, which included team bosses representing the interests of Peugeot, BMW, Chevrolet and Ferrari.

It is believed that FIA president Jean Todt – who of course led Peugeot’s Group C campaign in the final days of the old World Sports Car Championship 20 years ago – is open to the idea of bestowing a proper title on the series. Let’s hope he moves on it soon.

At the front of the ILMC, we’re looking forward to another chapter of Audi versus Peugeot, as the two giants renew their intense rivalry on the bumpy concrete runways of the Sebring airfield circuit. Typically, they’re being coy over their chances.

Peugeot comes to this race with its all-new 908 LMP1. Yes, I know, it’s got the same name as the old one that won Le Mans in 2009, and at first glance it looks identical. But trust me, it is a new car. Just wish they’d given it the new name it deserves. A confusing decision.

The 908 conforms to the new 2011 regulations that have been designed to slow Le Mans prototypes, and make them safer. Diesel engine sizes have been slashed from 5.5 to 3.7 litres, while the most significant chassis change is the addition of the ungainly F1-style ‘shark fins’ on the engine cowlings. As featured in Motor Sport last year, these have been added as an attempt to stop the old problem of prototypes flipping during accidents. They look awful, but if it marks the end of cars taking flight, then so be it.

“This is a working session for us,” reckons Peugeot Sport boss Olivier Quesnel, who adds a quite remarkable statement regarding the team’s Sebring aspirations: “We don’t intend to win and I don’t think it will happen.” Well, that’s ambitious…

Of course, Le Mans is the focus for the Pride of France. But Anthony Davidson topped night practice on Thursday, following the team’s time-topping performances in testing earlier in the week. The new car has every chance of scoring a debut victory, whatever the boss might say.

At Audi, the new R18 coupé won’t arrive here until the day after the race, as the team prepares to continue its testing programme on Monday. Instead, the German giant is wheeling out its old R15 ‘spyder’ for one last fling. The car has been dubbed the R15 Plus Plus, to reflect the changes that have been forced upon it to allow the team to race it against new 2011 cars. Internally the team is calling it the R15 Plus Minus, which is more accurate. A power-sapping smaller air restrictor has suffocated the turbodiesel that won Le Mans against the odds last year. “It’s as flat as a fart,” was Allan McNish’s colourful description of the difference it has made, but that did not stop the two cars setting the fastest times in the opening pair of practice sessions.

Where the difference will really tell in the race is how much harder it will be for the prototypes to lap GT cars around the high-downforce circuit. With a field of 56 cars, avoiding trouble in traffic could well decide the outcome of this race between the two giants. There’s little in it for pace. As Dr Ullrich said, “performance is not everything for this race”.

The Sebring 12 Hours is always hard fought, and so it promises to be once again. And its significance, as the kick-off point of a new era, only increases the intensity between the two rival camps. Whatever they might say in press conferences.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Much has been written about Nelson Piquet Jr’s deliberate accident at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, which, lest anyone has forgotten, precipitated a safety car period, which in turn created a situation that handed the race on a plate to Piquet’s Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso.

It was, by general consent, an appalling happening, and draconian punishments were forecast and – in some cases, anyway – duly handed down. Flavio Briatore was banned from motor racing for life, and Pat Symonds for five years; Renault, the company, got away with a suspended ban (i.e. nothing) and Piquet himself – said by many to have been the instigator of the idea – got not even that, having been granted immunity for turning in his ex-colleagues when the moment suited him (i.e. when he had been fired, and had a powerful thirst for revenge to slake).

“The worst example of cheating I’ve ever known,” commented Stirling Moss at the time, and few would take issue with him. What Piquet et al did that day was to cause an accident with the intention of gaining from it, right?

Right. And all sorts of things – some of them a touch hysterical, in my opinion – were said about the danger, the risk involved, both to Piquet and to other drivers, marshals and so on. I’m not attempting to play down the gravity of the offence, but the incident occurred at the exit of a slow corner, and the Renault finished up flush with the inside wall, well off the line. It was not nothing, by any means, but nor – to my eyes, anyway – was it quite the potential catastrophe described by some.

Now let’s go back a couple of years before the Singapore incident, to Monaco in 2006, to the dying seconds of the final qualifying session. Michael Schumacher had the all-important pole position, but feared that Alonso, out on the circuit and going for it, was going to beat him. Therefore, in the most cack-handed manner imaginable, Schumacher contrived to ‘have an accident’ at Rascasse, thereby blocking the track, so as to thwart Alonso.

Why cack-handed? Well, for a start because it wasn’t even vaguely believable. Michael came into the corner off the pace, and off his normal line. He then put the brakes on hard, locked up – and stopped, a couple of feet from the barrier. As Keke Rosberg said at the time, “Jesus, he could at least have knocked the nose off…” The Ferrari was completely undamaged.

Outrage in the paddock was extreme, and the stewards announced that they would investigate. Who knows why, but it was late that evening before they concluded that Schumacher should be… not banned for life or for five years or even for one race. No, he would start from the back of the grid. Wow! Was that hard-hitting or what? On race day he duly came through to fifth place, and four points.

Now, was what Michael did greatly different from what happened in Singapore? Was not the intention the same in both cases – namely, deliberately to ‘have an accident’ in the hope of benefiting from it? All right, Schumacher didn’t actually hit anything, but his car was in the middle of the road, engine dead, and a carambolage could have occurred behind it.

Perhaps his sin wasn’t as great as Piquet’s, but still he cheated with thoughts of gain in mind (and not for the first time, either). Of course the argument was that Michael’s action wasn’t planned, wasn’t preconceived. Probably so, but it didn’t keep him from spotting an opportunity, and deciding instantly to act upon it. And the discrepancy in the punishments handed out for the two ‘crimes’ seems to me more than a touch absurd.

None argued Schumacher’s case more trenchantly than Jean Todt, but he was then of course a Ferrari man, doing right by his team and thinking of nothing else. Now he is the president of the FIA, and the hope must be that now the interests of ‘the sport’ are uppermost in his mind. On the face of it, sundry announcements made in the wake of December’s World Motor Sport Council meeting give cause for optimism – not least those proposing fundamental changes in the way FIA stewards conduct themselves at a Grand Prix. A most encouraging start to the new regime in Paris, I thought.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

There are excellent reasons why Ari Vatanen should be the next president of the FIA – which is why it is unlikely he will be elected to the post in October.

Vatanen, one of the great rally drivers (World Champion in 1981), is a popular and well-respected man in the motor sport world, and already a trustee of the FIA Foundation. As well as that, he was an MEP for 10 years (standing down this year), and thus has experience of real-world politics, rather than the ersatz variety so relished in the Place de la Concorde. Vatanen is, as one F1 team principal put it, ‘a proper bloke’. He is also one who genuinely loves this sport – and that in itself would be a breakthrough after what we have been through in the last 18 years.

Apart from Vatanen, there appear to be two names on the table at the moment, and it’s fair to say that neither would be welcomed by the F1 community. Max Mosley, having held the post of president of the FIA since 1991, announced on June 24 that he would not stand for re-election in the autumn, then said on June 25 that perhaps – in light of horrid things said about him by those common FOTA tykes – he might do so, after all. Luca di Montezemolo, Mosley said, had given to the press an impression that he had been ousted. The very idea

Does Mosley really intend to stand again? Or is this all an elaborate preparation for sliding into office his preferred successor, one Jean Todt? No one – on the outside, anyway – has a clue, and, quite honestly, most are losing interest by the day. At Silverstone Bernie Ecclestone was told – in words of one syllable – by F1 luminaries that they were no longer prepared to work with Mosley, and it’s clear they have no wish to work with Todt, either.

If FOTA is to continue to operate within the framework of the FIA, and compete for the F1 World Championship in 2010 and beyond, its favoured choice for FIA president is emphatically Vatanen, a man it feels may be trusted. The teams, though, have no direct say in who shall be in the job.

In 2005, immediately before Mosley won yet another term as president, a ‘cabinet system’ was introduced at the FIA. What this means is that anyone aspiring to the presidency must accompany his application with a list of 22 names of folk within the FIA offering support for his candidacy. This is his ‘cabinet’.

None of the names in one person’s ‘cabinet’, however, may appear in another candidate’s list. Thus, the most powerful – and the best connected – candidates are likely to collar the bulk of the most influential FIA figures. Beginning to get the picture?

Not really a surprise that many FOTA team principals devoutly wish for a clean break from Max, the FIA, Bernie, CVC and the whole damn thing, is it? A ‘breakaway championship’? Bring it on, say I – unless somehow a man like Vatanen can find his way to the top floor in the Place de la Concorde, open the windows, and let in a little fresh air.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine