Did you get bitten by the motorsport bug after DTS or f1 fandom in general and now you want to watch more cars driving around? You should consider rally! It’s fun! I don’t hate any of the drivers yet! There are narratives! Let me tell you all about it! With words and pictures!
Awkward Memorial Preface
What is rally?
Driver/Co-driver Dynamics
Hyundai
Toyota
M-Sport
WRC2
Other People
This multi-part primer aspires to the era of livejournal canon primers with the hopes of there someday being multiple pages of fic in the World Rally Championship RPF tag on ao3. I started following the WRC this year, in the middle of Rally Sweden. Since then I semi obsessively watched all of the event highlights available on WRC+, which goes back to 2014. I’ve gone onto some weird Instagram spirals and learned very many facts. But I’m still new to this, and this primer is definitely a work in progress, and I would love for people who know more than me to come into my inbox with contradictory opinions and things I should know.
It was suggested that I start off by explaining why I think rally is cool, because I DO think it’s SO COOL. That's below the cut.
I started watching the WRC in the middle of February, and it’s May now, and I watched SO MANY HIGHLIGHTS, and have written 20k about these dudes being married in space. It’s taken over a big chunk of my brain, and I’m really happy about that! It’s fun!
I said I didn’t hate any of the drivers kind of flippantly, but that’s true, and really refreshing. The driver I like the least it’s because he’s annoyingly good, and I have both respect and fondness for him. There’s a lot of camaraderie in the WRC. They aren’t racing wheel to wheel, which means it’s a different sort of competition, it’s all down to your abilities and the conditions and the reliability of the car, not what the other guy does. It’s not as glamorous as F1, they’re out in the middle of nowhere driving narrow mountain roads.
Which — I think it’s just really nice to look at. It’s fun to watch cars slide around through really beautiful scenery. Rally at its best is beautiful on a cinematic level, which is a corny thing to say, but also true. I’m not a car fucker at all, but getting to see rally cars jump is amazing.
I like that it’s kind of DIY — it’s way more professional and organized than it used to be, but they still have to fix the cars themselves if there’s a problem, they’re getting muddy changing tires on the side of the road.
Trying to explain what makes rally so interesting I am going to defer to nine time WRC champion Sebastien Loeb, who has done all different kinds of racing, but says that rally is his favorite because as a driver it’s the most enjoyable amount of knowledge to have. In circuit racing the driver learns the track, Loeb thinks it gets boring. In something fully off-road the driver doesn't know what’s off the next hill, and can never push to the maximum because there's too much uncertainty about what you’re driving into. Rallying you know the road a bit, you have an idea of what comes next, so you can make an informed decision about how hard to push, but you’re never sure enough to be fully comfortable. Rallying is a combination of intense planning and dealing with the unexpected, which creates a really exciting competition to watch.
I went for some highlights on youtube to tempt you into paying attention, and couldn’t find the ideal compilation, but here are some things to try!
This video is a collection of dramatic moments from 2022.
This is just 35 minutes of cars going by without any commentary. I did not watch all of that, and don’t think you should, but give it a try!
