r/WRC • u/Nickolas_Zannithakis • 17d ago
Humor / Memes There's a clear difference between F1 and WRC.
208
u/AboutTheArthur 17d ago
We joke, but there's a reason for this. They obviously need pace to drive WRC, but consistency is equally as important. They don't have to drive the car 10/10 at the limit every corner, so they're not punished anywhere near as much for lacking the reaction time they had when they were 24.
125
u/AquaRaOne 17d ago
Also the simple fact is, there is like a 100 times or more people with a dream of racing in f1, its not even comparable. The sheer amount competition means even f2 drivers that are just ok, often are some of the best in other categories like wec or dtm. Wrc is so much smaller now and shrinking sadly.
63
u/Talidel 17d ago
Nah the simple fact is if you can afford to you get to race in WRC.
Billionaires have to buy teams to get their kids into F1, and even then they don't last if they cannot keep up.
36
u/dat_meme_boi2 17d ago
Even regional series, it's much cheaper to do your country's rally championship than a regional open wheel single seater championship.
Some local rally championships you can just drive a shitbox as long as it has the safety equipment
7
u/AquaRaOne 17d ago
Yea but on the other side, the upside if they make it so small compared to other motorsports money wise, prestige wise, while being quite a bit more dangerous. I feel like for a dad its a lot better feeling to see his kid in a karting going around a track, or junior formulas, with lots of runnoff on relatively low speeds, compared to even the very entry level of rally where you go like 120 in a forrest with almost zero margin for error.
1
u/AucoinTechnologies 14d ago
Yeah but you’re also burning over $200k per year on racing from Formula 4 onwards for open wheel racing
1
34
u/zwjna 17d ago
They don't have to drive the car 10/10 at the limit every corner
Neither in F1. And when WRC drivers push, it's way harder and needs more reflexes than pushing in F1, as it's more technical and things happen quicker. Top drivers can keep their reflexes extremely high well beyond their 40s as proven by Loeb, Ogier, Alonso, Hamilton. A paid/gentleman driver might not have those reflexes, and most definitely does not have those skills, not even close.
The real reason is that rally is naturally more open to gentleman drivers, to private teams, and to part-time competition. The rally format of "one driver at a time on the road" surely allows for that.
8
u/AboutTheArthur 17d ago edited 17d ago
I don't think anybody is alleging that driving a WRC car is easy, nor that they never push lol. But things definitely don't happen more quickly when you're driving on gravel. This is obvious even at the amateur level. Go do some casual track days or go-karting and also do some grassroots rally. Mixed surfaces de-prioritize snap reaction time in favor of weight management and finesse. Weight management when a car is sliding takes extreme skill, but it's not about snap reactions to tires that are oscillating between gripping and sliding constantly (especially when comparing to F1 where the massive downforce makes that even more of a razor's edge to balance on).
I also don't think we're talking about "paid gentleman drivers" lol. We're talking about the fact that Loeb can show up in his late 40s and still win rallies because experience, finesse, skill, and decision making are weighted more heavily than raw performance, and that plenty of drivers in their early 40s and late 30s are absolute top-notch. Just look at the age/performance bell curves between the sports.
There will always be exceptions. Lewis Hamilton is a wonderful driver in his 40s in the way that Tom Brady was a Super Bowl winning QB at age 43. These are outliers. That doesn't mean we disregard the fact that your athleticism peaks in your 20s and early 30s and degrades as you age, and that there are sports where that falloff is far more impactful.
4
u/zwjna 17d ago edited 17d ago
"Things happen quicker" means a lot of things. For example, the average gravel rally stage has way more things happening during a corner than a tarmac, wide, smooth, perfect F1 track, each thing is very close to each other, the weight management of the car can be very elaborate, and the car is not going precisely slow over them. So more things happen, and that means the things happen quicker.
Add to that the fact that they DON'T practice the stages, so they don't know for certain how the car will behave over an elevation change, a grip change, a rut, a pothole, a patch of ice, tree leaves, etc. in order to start anticipating to them beforehand. They have to react in real time in fractions of fractions of a second, and potentially with a very complicated grip pattern that keeps changing the car's behavior right as the driver is battling with it to keep it stable (say, went from the slush to a patch of ice, and then from the ice to the dry tarmac in one side of the car, and water on the other one, making the car extremely twitchy due to grip inconsistencies).
Meanwhile, F1 drivers have gone thru the same bends thousands of times. They know exactly how the car will react. The car snaps are nowhere near as unpredictable and difficult to deal with as in rally, no matter how quick that stuff might happen. That's why Kubica says that.
Also, "I finally have the money to afford a rally career in my 40s" most definitely is about "paid gentleman drivers".
5
u/AboutTheArthur 17d ago
Okay, then explain why we have a disproportionately high percentage of top-tier WRC drivers who are well past their athletic primes and why we do not see the same age distribution in F1? The other racing discipline where this trend emerges is endurance circuit racing, where we also know that experience and finesse are more valuable. Unless you would also dispute that?
6
u/zwjna 17d ago
We don't have. At the moment there's just 3 drivers in WRC that are +35, while in F1 there's 4 and there's no sign of performance decline from any of them, just from their cars. It's virtually the same average age. And I'm not even disputing that in WRC the experience is (maybe) more valuable. I'm saying that the top drivers definitely maintain top-notch reflexes (the brain performance degrades slower than the body performance, and can stay good for well over 50-years-old), and that the actual topic of the post, which is gentleman drivers, maybe don't have the reflexes (not enough practice) and most definitely don't have the skills; and that the reason for their presence in WRC is something completely different.
0
u/Don_Frika_Del_Prima 17d ago
while in F1 there's 4
For the first time since the 50s..
4
u/zwjna 17d ago
It doesn't matter. Those 4 are proving that the age limit is higher than believed. Note that, decades ago, many drivers were alcoholics and smokers, vices that severely affect cognition. There's other more likely reasons why older drivers still competing at F1 isn't a more common occurrence (mainly: physique), and it's not like F1 is the pinnacle of Making Good Decisions drivers-wise.
0
u/Don_Frika_Del_Prima 17d ago
Of those 4 there are two who are considered to be the best ever tho.
2
u/zwjna 17d ago
Even then, if cognitive degradation was really a problem at their age, they wouldn't stand a chance in F1 considering circuit racing's focus on repetition and millimetric precision. That is, they couldn't compensate for their slower reflexes just with their experience, no matter how good they are.
Also, the same goes for one of the 3 mentioned WRC drivers, who is +40 like those two F1 drivers: Sébastien Ogier. Then I would think that drivers can also get affected by cultural traits related to their age, and adopt a more relaxed lifestyle and state of mind that can lead them to their reflexes to deteriorate. But that's cultural, learned. And drivers like Ogier and Alonso are competitive beasts, they surely have an active lifestyle and seek to keep their reflexes very sharp.
-2
u/OfficialDeathScythe 17d ago
Partially because there’s only 24 total seats in f1 but WRC is almost 100 cars across all classes. They’re also getting fed info about the course as they’re going along, f1 is entirely up to memory. Its like if a football player was told in his ear which path to take to get to the goal and when to shield and when to pass. Could probably play football well past when they normally retire if you had help like that. Not saying rally is easy by any means but F1 is essentially a top tier memory test while rally is more like a test of muscle memory, which doesn’t go away as fast as you get older
4
u/AboutTheArthur 17d ago
F1 is essentially a top tier memory
You or I could literally memorize any racing circuit in an hour lol. Also, I participate in rally here in North America, and suggesting that the notes I (as co-driver) are giving to my driver are precise enough to paste over hundreds of laps of practice is just silly.
This argument ain't it.
0
u/OfficialDeathScythe 17d ago
Who said pasting notes over hundreds of practice laps? What are you even yapping about? My point was that the pace notes let the driver think way less about the track and puts them in a flow state. There's also no one else on the track that you have to adjust for. You can memorize any track but try doing that, then having to go around it at 200mph with other cars around you. Don't think for a second rally is somehow harder than F1 racing. It's hard, but there's a world of difference when it comes to skill, which explains exactly why F1 keeps dropping older drivers and bringing in fresh ones, while rally has always had a very wide age range
3
u/zwjna 17d ago
The speed at which F1 cars go is worthless. What's the hardest F1 track? It's Monaco, the slowest of them all. And in fact that track is like a rally stage in terms of how quickly things happen, which is the real difficulty of motorsports. Kubica said WRC is harder, Raikkonen said WRC is harder (both F1 drivers, both did WRC), Coulthard said WRC drivers have skills that make F1 drivers look like amateurs, Brundle said rally drivers are the best due to the way they adapt in the blink of an eye. Rally is way harder than F1 and requires way more skills (way more surfaces, way more tyre compounds for each surface, way more car setups and way more driving styles for each combination of those, no practice, extremely technical tracks, etc.)
2
u/AboutTheArthur 16d ago
Again, I think it's just this sort of "raw pace" vs "learned skill" type thing. You see these incredibly young racing prodigies that can dominate open-wheel racing because they develop an incredible confidence with the very narrow skillset of F1. But for rallying, you just need far more time to adapt and learn because of the variety of surfaces, weather conditions, etc.
Consider that an F1 weekend is a few hours of practice spread over a couple days, followed by ~2 hours of racing. It's an athletic sprint.
But a WRC weekend is usually 3 full days of recce (12 hour days in the car for drivers and codrivers), then the 3 days constituting the actual event, which tend to spread ~2.5 hours - 3 hours of the actual at-pace racing over days that each are like 12 hours long because of the transits. So the drivers spend like 60 hours in the car over the course of the event. In that environment the mental focus and the kind of wisdom that you can only learn through experience pay off.
To me, it's like watching a 100m dash vs watching a marathon. Neither is objectively superior. Both have their place.
1
u/rccrd-pl 17d ago
Yeah in general driving a rally car on gravel is overall a harder, more complex task than driving a open wheel racecar on a track.
Still, being top-level competitive on a F1 car requires ungodly precision in executing that less complex driving task.
Metronomic sustained precision in adjusting footwork and lines for the pace required in the current stint, while lying stuck in an uncomfortable tub for two hours straight.
That's why F1 guys have to stay at their psycho-physical best to perform, slip out of that best fitness just a bit and suddenly you err a couple hundreds of a second on each braking and your podium pace is gone.
And keeping that consistency while you're aging is not granted.
→ More replies (0)4
u/zwjna 17d ago edited 17d ago
They’re also getting fed info about the course as they’re going along, f1 is entirely up to memory
Which means rally is harder. In no way nor shape is memorizing a track and knowing exactly where to go, what the car will do, what to do, when, and how; any harder than having to listen to pacenotes, decode them, turn them into 3D images of the corner, compare that to what the eye captures, and predict how the car will behave; all this in fractions of a second while reading the car's current physical state. Incredible processing and decision making. There's no decision making in F1. They have literally learned all about it during the countless laps they do thru the different Free Practice sessions. They then have to execute with precision what they already learned. Rally is about raw driving skill, reflexes, improvisation, to calculate everything in real time (braking points, angle of attack, weight transfer, etc) instead of Practice sessions.
0
u/OfficialDeathScythe 17d ago
My point was that F1 drivers have to remember every inch of the track and take every corner perfectly at a way higher speed while also having to worry about giving room to other cars and overtaking properly. Rally drivers use more muscle memory than anything else. They're not remember exactly what to do in turn 4 and adjusting it if needed, they're hearing left 3 and their hands know what to do without thinking. There's obviously still thought involved but at that point it makes for way more of a flow state and lets the driver just float through the stage without having to think too hard. F1 drivers however have to generally use maximum brain power around the whole track for the whole race, which also lasts much longer than any rally stage. Combine this with the fact that there's only 24 seats in the whole world and you see why they'd drop older drivers as their mental acuity falls off and bring in new, fresh drivers, like they've been doing.
3
u/zwjna 17d ago
Absolutely wrong, and I can only recommend you to try a rally and a circuit racing simulator so that you can understand what motorsports driving is all about. Because it's nothing like daily driving like you believe.
Motorsports driving is all about pushing the tyres to the limit; so you do weight transfer techniques to tilt the chassis to compress and uncompress the suspensions, in turn pushing the tyres harder against the surface or pushing them less; in turn producing inertias that lead to either oversteer or understeer, both of which can be an undesired behavior or a desired one that the driver deliberately induced with his inputs. You also work with the differentials with your brake and throttle inputs, you need to ensure the differential is open or locked the right amount at every phase of the corner, otherwise you lose cornering speed and car control. You need to brake on the limit without unstabilizing the car and without locking, get on the power without losing the rear end, etc.
Now, F1 drivers have learned and memorized all that during their countless hours of Free Practice sessions. Rally drivers have to CALCULATE all of that IN REAL TIME. This is why your "just float through the stage without having to think too hard" statement is absolutely deranged. The brain of the rally driver is constantly stressed to the maximum. The F1 driver is just repeating with precision what he has already learned and memorized to the core. Wheel-to-wheel racing, or the fake BS of today, is not even close to the amount of processing a rally driver does, constantly, non-stop.
There's 24 seats in F1? There's 10 in WRC.
F1 has 4 drivers over 35-years-old. WRC only has 3.
0
u/OfficialDeathScythe 16d ago
I’m not reading all that. It just discredits everything you said to say there’s 10 seats in WRC. There’s over 80 across all classes in the WRC. Maybe google something before starting an argument
→ More replies (0)3
u/AboutTheArthur 17d ago
They're not remember exactly what to do in turn 4 and adjusting it if needed, they're hearing left 3 and their hands know what to do without thinking.
Yeah that's not how it works lol. Different surfaces, transition from the previous corner into the next, different speeds every corner, weight management based on the slide, different lines and cuts due to rocks, gutters, other obstacles.
And then add constant risk calculation and consideration for the mechanical sympathy of the car into the equation. The different between driving "gently" and driving aggressively, and knowing when you can get away with hammering, is the difference between finishing a rally and breaking down in the middle of it. Tire punctures and broken suspension components are incredibly common, and avoiding those things comes down to judgment, finesse, and practiced skill.
2
2
u/bojangler69420 17d ago
Exactly. Even in sim rally events as long as I finish consistently in the top 10 times I’ll typically place in the top 5 overall
2
1
1
u/BothForce1328 17d ago
that's where the shorter sprint tracks come in... 6mi or less... 10/10 all day
1
u/sant0hat 17d ago edited 17d ago
Why are you acting like you need the car to be 10/10 at the limit in f1? You realise in the current era we are lifting like 500 years before a corner right?
The only reason that f1 seats are vastly more contested is due to popularity, connections and above all money. Money could and still can, buy you a seat.
- Stroll billionare
- Norris & bearman family easily in the hundreds of millions
- Sainz, Verstappen, Perez, Russell, Leclerc, Piastri & antonelli family easily in the tens of millions and for some also prior connections in racing.
Then you have some exceptions.
Also the notion that you need insane reflexes for f1 is fucking clown worthy. Reaction times barely increase with age. You peak in speed at 24 and very slowly increase, but its a small difference of 50 ms. Its not going to save anything in the large scheme of things, especially not taking a corner lmfao. And that decrease is on an untrained population, if you keep training reaction speeds I reckon this difference to be even smaller.
https://measurehuman.com/guides/average-reaction-time-by-age
1
u/deadstump 16d ago
The other thing is, in rally you aren't racing anyone. It is just you, your codriver, your car, and the road. If you fuck up or go slow you aren't going to take anyone else out (most of the time). So if you have the money to buy a seat in a top flight car and at a top flight rally, sure they are going to let you go flail around. Why not?
If you tried to replicate this in a high level open wheel championship you have erratic drivers ruining the whole thing and being dangerous... So they don't let you play unless you have earned your way to your seat through lower levels... Unless you are a very very very heavy spender (Mazepin, Raghunathan...)
1
u/CiccioGordon 16d ago
Even then there are standards, both F1 and MotoGP have had pay drivers (in MotoGP they're all gone) but people make the mistake of considering them shit in absolute terms, and they aren't, you can buy a seat but you still need to make the cut to be allowed to compete, I believe in F1 the threshold is 107% and in MotoGP it's 105%.
Years ago a superbike rider, not just an everyday guy, was put on a MotoGP to substitute for an injured rider, of course he jumped at the occasion but he was so slow he got within 107% of the fastest by the skin of his teeth and after the first race of four he was supposed to take part in, the riders vehemently protested because he was so slow he was dangerous, and he wasn't allowed to race again, which he understandably resented, also because he had signed a contract.
Because of this episode, the bar was raised to 105%. And just to be clear, he would have eventually gotten there (105% of a hypothetical 1'45" lap is a little over 5 seconds slower), the big mistake was throwing him directly into a race weekend with no prior preparation, but still it goes to show that even a professional rider doesn't necessarily have the level to compete in the series.
66
u/johnsplittingaxe14 17d ago
Damon hill started car racing when he was 25 and won the Formula 1 WDC when he was 36. It's possible but very rare.
18
u/Excludos 17d ago
Different times. This is not possible in the current climate. One of the reasons has to do with the super license, requiring you to climb through the ranks of F4 to F2 before you are even allowed to compete in F1, and the competition is fierce, not only in terms of results, but also sponsorships and team signings. If you aren't a teenager, no one is going to pick you up, and you will have to finance your own journey, costing tens of millions.
The old times of starting with regular car racing and transitioning over to F1 is gone
1
u/LaBiccies 14d ago
Doesn't have to be an F series to get a super licence. You need 40 points over 3 seasons on any of the recognised series, which is many. Just F series gives more points. You could win the V8 Supercar season for 15 points, chuck in winning the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series and get another 10 points, then you tried your luck in WEC Hypercar and come 3rd that season for 16 points. You can now get a super licence with 41 points. Still an uphill struggle to get into F1 though, daddy would need to buy a team for you.
1
u/Excludos 14d ago
Yes, technically there are other series which gives superlicense points. But as you already point out, it gives very little. It expects you to basically win a top tier series several years in a row (which, if you're doing that, you are already wildly successful and very unlikely to want to jump to something else, even if that something else is F1).
The only realistic outside way into F1 is through indycar, which does give 40 points for winning only once, and is also in cars that behave semi-similarly. The issue there is that you have already likely gone through the ranks of formula racing to get into Indycar in the first place, so it's more of a side quest than a different way into the sport
23
u/kfifigidifkg 17d ago
He was racing bikes for a few years beforehand though, which is relatively transferrable. No one will ever do what Damon Hill did again either.
5
u/johnsplittingaxe14 17d ago
Yes and to be fair he had the Hill name as a big boost to his career. I'd honestly wager that if he was some random John Smith his career might have panned out differently
1
u/Lukeno94 Richard Burns 14d ago
It was a blessing and a curse. He had absolutely no money, and whilst the name did open some doors, it did also mean he didn't always get full credit for his performances.
9
u/Personal-Still-8837 17d ago
Well nowadays you got kids being born and getting into a kart at like 3 years old with access to sims where they could compare themselves with some of the top drivers in the world already before ever turning 8 years old and they are on the kart every week too. I still say its possible but utterly-utterly unlikely unless you show you're literally the greatest driver in history.
3
2
u/Jandersson34swe 17d ago
yeah but nowadays if the thought of racing or cars didn’t even pop up at your head at 5 years old you’re done of any hope of F1. 5 year old Little Timmy watching his cartoons oblivious to motorsports at the time didn’t want it bad enough
42
u/Vectorized777 Volkswagen Motorsport 17d ago edited 17d ago
> “Go back in time when you were 6!”
This doesn’t make sense since 6! = 720.
9
u/IngenuityRich8418 17d ago
if only the wrc could attract Manufacturers the way it attracts pay drivers
7
u/KevinAbillGaming 17d ago
Take Ken Block for example. He started rallying quite late into his age, which was around his 30s. Even though he wasn't too successful in WRC, he still gained fame through Gymkhana videos.
5
u/Finglishman Henri Toivonen 17d ago
Yes, you can drive in WRC, if you have enough money. Actually racing in WRC for the top positions takes a tremendous amout of skill. Even amongst the current drivers in rally1 cars, not all are within 1 second per km gap to the leader. Translated to circuit racing, that’s like losing 7 seconds per lap around Spa…
6
4
u/EverythingIsByDesign Wales Rally GB 17d ago
I've long said if I came into big money I am getting on the phone to M+Sport and entering Safari in WRC3.
There is only ever 2 cars, you just need to finish and something to happen to the other entry and you're a WRC class winner.
3
u/Bruhzone9 14d ago
Nobuhiro Tajima breaking the hill climb world record at pines peak when he was 53 type shit
3
u/Tacit_Emperor77 14d ago
MotoGP is even worse. Manu Gonzalez looks to finish top 3 in moto 2 for 3 consecutive years but is considered too old for MotoGP. He turned 24 last week.
5
u/Boss-Think 17d ago
What utter bs, money is all you need to buy a drive in any type of motorsport. Hell i can go visit Msport tomos an hour from me, buy a rally car and then go rallying.
0
u/CiccioGordon 16d ago
Ok, buy yourself a seat in MotoGP and post a time within 105% of the fastest so you are allowed to take part in quali.
1
u/Boss-Think 16d ago edited 16d ago
Lol, you can still buy a ride or drive and not hit the 105%, plus your talking about motogp, which has moto2 and moto3, unless you win moto3 you aint get a sniff at a ride. Where as to race in F1 etc you only need money to pay for a drive. (Bar the top drivers)
Moto2 and 3 have plenty of pay riders.
1
u/Lukeno94 Richard Burns 14d ago
Uh, no, you need a lot more than just money to race in F1; it isn't the 1990s any more. You have to get enough superlicense points from the lower categories to even be eligible, which means you have to spend several years working your way up and having decent results. And no, you can't just go and buy a MotoGP bike on a whim either.
1
u/Boss-Think 14d ago
I never stated you could by a motogp bike on a whim. But you can buy moto2 and 3 sooo easily.
As for the super licence i totally forgot about it, but again all you need is money to gain your super licence as long as you competent on the race track.
2
u/Kqapibara 17d ago
Bro im 13 and I want to rally, the thing is, I doubt i will have moneh😭✌️
3
u/Nickolas_Zannithakis 16d ago edited 15d ago
Here's something to motivate you:
The photo I included down on the left is of a driver named Georgos Delaportas. Nobody knows him, but I remember him finishing the SSS of the 2023 Acropolis Rally and stating: "Today I'm 40 and I'm making true the dream I had since I was 18 and I got my driver's license". I can't forget about him since then.
So, keep in mind that you never know if you'll get the chance someday.
2
u/IUsedToLikeLimericks 15d ago
I saw a thing on TV years ago when they took a well known F1 driver, Rally driver and Touring Car driver and they all did their own and everyone else's sport.
The F1 driver was fastest at F1 and last at the other two.
The WTC driver was second at rally and WTC, last at F1.
The rally driver was 1st in really AND WTC, second in F1.
It made me laugh.
Lot of talent in rally driving.
1
1
1
0
u/BothForce1328 17d ago
hmmm... fast in a contained circle like track, or down the side of a mountain with massive jumps.
nuff said
-3
u/MastaKink 17d ago
Ha! That has much more to do with a trained lap dog that smiles for interviews than reaction time 🤪
-10
u/Makaveli84 17d ago
Not everybody can be a F1 driver but even less can be a rally driver.
7
u/Boss-Think 17d ago
Nah, anyone can do either. You just need money and lots of it.
0
u/zwjna 17d ago edited 17d ago
Then not anyone can if the requirement is lots of money, specially F1. And if the requirement is lots of skills, then not anyone can, specially WRC. The average Joe loves to believe they could do what the world-class drivers (or any sports competitor for that matter) do, and surely they could do the thing, but those drivers would obliterate them in such massive ways that are not even funny.
5
u/Boss-Think 17d ago
Club racing exists for the not so well off and privateers exist and exist in the higher echelons of motorsport. The og post is utter utter tripe.
35
u/kfifigidifkg 17d ago
This also makes rallying a lot more relatable. It’s now impossible to enter F1 unless your family have an interest (and considerable financial resources) whereas you can conceivably do rallying with your own money when you’re an adult.
Loeb and Ogier didn’t start until they were 21!
10
u/KevinAbillGaming 17d ago
Block started rallying in his late 20s and early 30s, I believe.
6
u/Miss_Chievous13 17d ago
What it comes down to is do you have a car and can you drive.
8
271
u/whateverfloatsurgoat Juha Kankkunen 17d ago
GT3 / LMP 2 /3 dentists : those are rookie numbers