I thought that jostling over starting order might play a part in Rally Jordan, and it certainly did.

At the end of day one there was the usual slowing down by the front runners to try to avoid being first on the road on day two. Annoying and utterly counter-productive, but nothing unusual.

It was before day three’s stages that things took a turn for the faintly embarrassing. There’s a good account of it on autosport.com, but in short: Citroen wanted to help rally leader Sebastien Loeb, and to that end sacrificed Sebastien Ogier, who was very much fighting for a podium finish; Ford countered, using an out of contention Mikko Hirvonen to advantage Jari Matti-Latvala. This wasn’t by means of the familiar slowing down, but possibly-intentional time penalties, and checking into stages early to run ahead of their allotted slot. All just to sweep dust from the stages for their manufacturer’s chosen one.

It sounds ridiculous, and it clearly was. The TV coverage on Dave did well to sort of gloss over it a bit and move on, presumably so as not to make the sport look like the massive moron it was being.

Happily, there’s quite a bit of unrest about the situation. There’s not enough noise coming from either the sport’s promoter, North One Sport, or the FIA, but there is a whiff of change in the air nonetheless.

Let’s consider the options. Remember that we don’t want the leader to be disadvantaged to the point that leading is undesirable; but neither do we want the leader to be at a particular advantage, otherwise it’ll all be over after day one.

The leader – or in the case of day one, the fastest driver in shakedown – could choose their own road position. This gives the leader an unreasonable advantage.

The starting order could be randomised. This would work to an extent, but someone’s still going to be disadvantaged, so starting order will become a very familiar, very boring excuse.

I reckon there’s a far easier way to level the playing field for the WRC competitors: don’t send the WRC competitors out first. That way the Junior, Super 2000 or Production WRC cars – or anyone else taking part in the rally, for that matter – clear the road for the big names.

I’m sure there are arguments that the other cars go out after the WRC guys because they’re slower and more accident prone, but something’s got to give. Because it’s inexcusably stupid the way it is.