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WRS3: Mid-Season

In place of the usual round by round update, as there are only a few ways you can write content that is 90% the same as the previous entries, I thought a general overview was a better way forward, as WRS3 seems to have found itself a groove, where the results are fluctuating somewhat infrequently.

At the mid-season point, the inaugural rally season has proven to be eye opening and successful, while drivers are still getting to grips with - and discussing - the finer points of the discipline. Tyre dramas aplenty have seen a shake-up in the results as the road surface will severely punish anybody on the wrong tyre, and with two compounds to choose from on the most commonly used gravel tyre, testing is still going strong in determining which is best for which conditions. Similarly with the trade off between dry asphalt, drying asphalt, and wet asphalt, as conditions are so vast and varied that the usual % wet advice as seen in other series, is simply an image of rain in differing severity, forcing managers to make an informed decision, usually based on prior experience, as to how to approach the four stages in any given day.

To this point, we still only have two winners of rally events, championship favourite Martin Vaculik (5) and Wynn Hunter (2), though many others like Adam Mazur, Bão Pereira and Visvaldis Ceļš all seem capable of capitalising and winning on their day if the situation were to arise! And as both winning drivers are using Toyota builds, it remains to be seen who the first non-Toyota winner will be.

At the half way stage, and before the series heads of to Sardinia for Rally Italy, the standings look like this:

1. M. Vaculik - 161pts
2. W. Hunter - 116pts
3. J. Bão Pereira - 78pts
4. A. Mazur - 71pts
5. D. Varadi - 69pts
6. V. Ceļš - 64pts
7. R. Müller - 33pts
8. J. Korhonen - 28pts
9. H. Castroneves - 23pts
10. H. Soares Valente - 18pts

Albeit entirely impartial, early runner for (unofficial) Driver of the Season would be Visvaldis Ceļš. The Latvian got off to an admittedly slow start, but rapidly found himself in regular contention for podiums as his focus on rally skills came to the fore, the rookie running 18 year old highlighting the significance of knowing how to hang the tail of a car out on slippery roads. By all means established drivers can take great results in Rally, as is often proven in asphalt events like France, but expect to lose out to the few who have learned how to "turn left by turning right" on gravel, snow and dirt ;)

Vaculik has been dominant at the front, and realistically only relinquished a few wins through administrative error, and many of these names seem set to duke it out together next season too, as WRS2 recently went live to accept applicants!

The developing story now is who can hold on (or claw back) to claim P3! That's not to say that Hunter is a runaway P2, but a gap is certainly developing to the chasing pack.

"We absolutely didn't expect this level of success!" said Hunter, who was rather outspoken in the previous season over the abundance of highly ranked drivers joining the low rated series. "We thought we would steal a podium once or twice at best, but our focus on rally skills has given us this edge, I'm happy I didn't bail on it! Although, it has ensured that I am completely out of contention to represent the UK in the Nation's Cup, and the only thing I'm fighting for in F3 is my pride...".

The remaining run to the end of the season sees a predominantly gravel surface across the board, the legendary Finnish rally follows Italy, Germany offers another all-asphalt run, and Rally Wales will throw the only other spanner in the mix with an abundance of mud, potentially calling on the first usage of the niché "Earth" tyre.