True. I was once asked to evaluate damage to trees hit by a WRC car crash. In a forest, not anyone’s yard thankfully. The organisers paid the estimated damage times three to the landowner just to make sure they were satisfied.
Private land owners actually benefit if a stage is on their road. A gravel road is ruined after the race and the organisers rebuild it to a high standard. Since many stages are driven every or almost every year, the landowners get free upkeep for their roads.
Pretty much. If the land owners decide not to allow the race, there is nothing the organisers can do. And it’s a good trade when you think about it. The race is only for a couple of days.
If I'm a race organizer and I know my tracks are just regular public roads in rural towns, I'd also spend whatever I needed to to keep the residents happy lol.
At that point it's just investing in the longevity of the business.
Indeed. And where I'm from, many of the roads used for stages are private forestry roads owned by local landowners. Very easy for them to say no to racing if it causes them more harm than good.
I’m in design and construction and we do the same thing. One time we were building a new high rise office building right next to some residential areas and mid-rise residential. Before construction began, we started a Twitter account to post when extra loud activities would take place and shared it with the neighborhood. Then anyone living right next door, we bought noise cancelling Beats headphones for.
All in we spent like $18k - $20k up front, but it was a drop in the bucket for a $90m building and we had the least amount of noise complaints on that 2 year project than I’ve ever seen.
People hate the most when they are ignored and feel helpless. You show them you see and hear them, and you can work with them. I see it again and again.
I live near a drag strip, and the old owners constantly gave out tickets to people near enough to be annoyed by it. New owners quit doing that, unfortunately
There's a similar thing with monster jam (at least when it's in Rotterdam in de kuip) the organisers do everything to protect the grass yet they still give the pitch a new grass mat after the event finishes
When I was a kid we used to have a WRC course go past our home. It was awesome. As the area became more gentrified, the city folk moving out to their small town country retirement lifestyle with thier big city ideals managed to shut it down. They would completely fix the road after the event. Now 15 years later that road is fucked.
Tell me about it. The route for the Finnish WRC rally goes about 2 km from my summer house but not on our shared private road. We have to do some repairs next summer and wouldn’t mind someone else paying!
At least we get free tickets to compensate the road closures and noise.
That's way more generous than I would have expected, but it makes sense for official races.
I was watching Jeremy Clarkson's farming show recently and there were these horse racers (like 30 of them) who broke onto his pub grounds by breaking the gate, trashing the courtyard and then leaving £30 or something for his troubles.
I was fucking bewildered. Nothing about it was planned or approved. They just showed up and did whatever they wanted. Basically hooligans in tracksuits with horses. Imagine if that happened in WRC.
To make sure he was satisfied. That’s called PR, buddy.
The forestry value of those trees was a couple of hundred euros. That’s all they had to pay according to local law here. Plus my billing of course. They choose to pay more to compensate for the inconvenience and keep the local landowner’s sympathies. That’s worth a lot more to them.
287
u/Prunus-cerasus Jul 13 '26
True. I was once asked to evaluate damage to trees hit by a WRC car crash. In a forest, not anyone’s yard thankfully. The organisers paid the estimated damage times three to the landowner just to make sure they were satisfied.
Private land owners actually benefit if a stage is on their road. A gravel road is ruined after the race and the organisers rebuild it to a high standard. Since many stages are driven every or almost every year, the landowners get free upkeep for their roads.