Ah, the wildcard entry. There’s little better than seeing a rider or driver on an unfamiliar grid, beating the regulars. Unless you’re one of the regulars, of course.

Formula 1

Formula 1 doesn’t do wildcards. It’s a shame, but I can’t see how it could work.

Ferrari – famously keen on the idea of running a three-car team – would probably enter a wildcard at every race. Probably the same driver, if they could get away with it.

Instead, one driver getting a chance in F1 means another losing out. Karun Chandhok is the lucky one this weekend in Germany, taking the place of Jarno Trulli at Team Lotus. No bad thing.

MotoGP

Maybe it’s because there’s not as much spare cash sloshing around the sport, but there are no such restrictions on wildcards in MotoGP. And they can provide some real highlights.

Troy Bayliss, for example, winning the final race of the 2006 season at Valencia, on a wildcard entry for Ducati, having already won the World Superbike title for them. That was in place of the injured Sete Gibernau though, so perhaps not the purest example of a wildcard.

There’s a proper wildcard entry for AMA rider Ben Bostrom this weekend at Laguna Seca. He’ll double the number of riders at LCR Honda, persumably as a bit of a kick up the arse for Toni Elias. It’ll be fascinating to see how he gets on.

Hopper

The man LCR Honda really wanted was apparently John Hopkins – who suddenly finds himself in demand this season, after a couple of troubled years.

His performance in British Superbikes has been one of the highlights of the year so far. To so quickly return to winning ways, on the unfamiliar and – shall we say – idiosyncratic, circuits of the British Isles is hugely impressive. Hands up who wouldn’t love to see him win the championship? If your hand’s up, shame on you.

He’s already been rewarded by Suzuki with one MotoGP race – standing in for an injured Alvaro Bautista at Jerez – and he’s got a wildcard entry on a second Suzuki at Brno next month. Not only that, but he – along with his BSB team-mate – has a wildcard entry for the World Superbike round at Silverstone.

You can’t blame him for passing on LCR Honda, and not risking his clearly very good relationship with Suzuki. Already I can’t wait to see what he’ll be doing next season.

Superbikes

He’s by no means the only superbike rider to get about.

Tom Sykes had a wildcard entry for the Brands Hatch GP round of British Superbikes last year, with the Kawasaki World Superbike team, and won two of the three races. He’s doing the same again this year.

And before he made his MotoGP debut proper in 2010, Ben Spies had a clutch of wildcard entries: three in 2008 for Suzuki, when he was riding for them in AMA; and one in 2009 for Yamaha, when he won the World Superbike title with them. He scored points in every one of them.

Four wheels

Unless I’m being an idiot – quite possible – wildcards on four wheels don’t tend to be quite so high profile.

There’s a bit of it in touring cars – Colin Turkington at the Donington Park round of the WTCC last weekend, for example. But that didn’t go terribly well.

Rallying too. Volkswagen, for example, preparing for the debut of the Polo R WRC in 2013, by running Skoda Fabia S2000s for various young drivers this season.

But most enticing is The $5,000,000 Challenge in IndyCar – which will see five non-regulars race at the finale in Las Vegas. The lure is a $5 million payout if they win the race. How great an idea is that? Very great.

If only Formula 1 had an appetite for that sort of thing…

There’s a lot of talk in Formula 1 today about the likelihood or otherwise of News Corporation launching a bid for the sport. It’s healthy to be suspicious of News Corp – but don’t forget that Formula 1 has had its fair share of questionable dealings in the past.

Inevitably, all this has raised the prospect of Formula 1 coverage going to Sky Sports. Being a selfish Freeview watching sort, it’s the last thing I’d want. It’s also not terribly likely – I hope. Formula 1 with no presence on free-to-air TV would be a significantly less attractive prospect for pretty much everyone involved – fans, teams, sponsors, FIA.

MotoGP

MotoGP rights holders Dorna realised that a couple of years ago, and made a push for free-to-air coverage at the expense of subscription channels. That stripped Eurosport UK of its rights, which didn’t go down well at all – chiefly because of Toby Moody and Julian Ryder commentating on Eurosport, compared to Steve Parrish and Charlie Cox on the BBC.

A compromise was reached, with delayed coverage of the MotoGP race on Eurosport, but Dorna essentially stuck to their free-to-air guns.

WRC

World Rally Championship promoters North One Sport didn’t seem to share Dorna’s view when the WRC rights were awarded to subscription-only channel ESPN earlier this year, having been on free-to-air Dave previously. Google still shoves more traffic to this site on that subject than anything else, so it’s clearly not just an issue for me.

I genuinely believe that the WRC will suffer in the UK for not being on a free-to-air channel. Obviously I’m more than a casual motorsport fan, but I realised yesterday that I didn’t know who won last weekend’s Rally Jordan. Out of sight, out of mind.

North One Sport was acquired by CSI last month, and I’ve seen no mention of the ESPN deal being multi-year. So hopefully the new owners might give a little more priority to getting the WRC in front of a few more eyeballs in 2012. Fingers crossed.

WTCC

The World Touring Car Championship seems even less bothered about free-to-air. Given that the promoter is Eurosport, that’s perhaps not a surprise. Until this year, ITV4 had half-hour highlights from every round, but it looks like that hasn’t been renewed for 2011.

That’s a shame, obviously, but I’m not sure I’m that fussed. There’s a lot of uncertainly in touring cars at the moment – particularly around regulations – and the WTCC seems to have suffered the most. It could pick up again, but this year doesn’t look like it’ll be a classic. I think I can live without it.

Extreme Element asked me to try a rally driving experience. I duly obliged.

“It’s not as easy as it looks, is it?”

That’s what my instructor said to me after my first run in the Ford Escort RS2000. Who thinks rally driving looks easy?! I tend to assume that there’s a reason I’m not doing these things professionally. Other people, apparently, are not so realistic.

To be clear, it is as fun as it looks. The Escort is a rear-wheel drive mechanical beast: no power steering, hydraulic handbrake, immediate grunt, and a healthily loose back end. So to speak.

It’s not easy to nail the technique for the perfect handbrake turn (TCP – turn, clutch, PULL!), but it’s satisfying to occasionally string it together and power out of the corner like you’re supposed to. What’s easier is making that rear flick out: just put your boot down, the wheels spin up, job done. Great fun. And it’s no less fun when the drift turns into, well, more of a spin.

There’s a short dirt track in the courtyard of the London Rally School, where you get a chance to ‘master’ these basics before taking to their short mixed-surface special stage – mainly loose surface, just sealed at the hairpins. The Escort is fantastic to throw around on both.

Fast forward through thirty years of rally car development, and the Subaru Impreza WRX is a different matter entirely. There’s no point taking it out on the tight courtyard track; straight to the special stage with you.

The challenge in the Impreza is to take the car to the limit of adhesion, and keep it there – quite unlike the Escort, where the limit of adhesion is just the starting point. It’s about using the impressive power and grip of the Impreza, being patient, keeping it neat and tidy. That makes it less of wild ride, but no less fun – to my way of thinking, at least.

There’s a real joy in feeling grip start to give way, then with a flurry of activity at the steering wheel, save the car from sliding out of control, put the power down, and feel the turbo kick in. Admittedly it’s a bit less slick if your flailing hands happen to turn the wipers on in the process, we’ll just gloss over that.

With up to six drivers per car, you necessarily spent the vast majority of the time waiting around – significantly more than at a track, in my experience. But with tea and biscuits available inside – in a room just off the workshop, which is surely the sign of an operation with its priorities right – and your fellow drivers to watch, it’s not so bad. Timing one of the runs is a nice touch, and gives a bit of substance to the debrief.

I was 7th out of 11, if you’re interested. A well-deserved underachievement, I think you’ll agree.

It looks like Henning Solberg has a new personal sponsor, because the distinctive orange of his Expert-branded Ford Fiesta RS WRC has disappeared, to be replaced by a multi-coloured Ludo Mobil livery for this weekend’s Rally Portugal.

It’s a shame to lose the orange from the WRC, but the new paint job is still a lot of fun. It’s rather familiar though: as @omnitog pointed out on Twitter, it bares a striking resemblance to an old special edition VW Polo.

It turns out that’s the Volkswagen Polo Harlequin, launched in 1995. Uncanny, isn’t it?

Photo Credits
Ford Fiesta RS WRC: Stobart M-Sport Ford Rally Team, Facebook
Volkswagen Polo Harlequin: Thomas Doerfer, Wikimedia Commons – Some rights reserved

The nice people at Extreme Element have asked me to review one of their driving experiences. Needless to say, I’m happy to oblige.

I’ve done a bit of circuit driving at Thruxton a couple of times, but rally driving is something I’ve always fancied, but not got around to.

So to put that right, early next month I’ll be off to the misleadingly-named London Rally School (it’s near Bicester) to get behind the wheel of a Ford Escort RS2000 and a Subaru Impreza. That’s rear- and four-wheel drive covered, and their special stage features loose and sealed surface sections. Sounds bloody marvellous to me.

I’ll let you know how I get on. (It will be badly.)

I’m a little bit obsessed with the colour orange. Not in a mental way, you understand. But I do like to see an orange paint job on a car or bike. It’s colourful. The world doesn’t have to be all corporate, clinical, white and blue.

If you’re looking for a good orange livery, then the obvious place to start is Orange Arrows, active in Formula 1 between 2000 and 2002. Well, active in part of 2002, until the team ran out of money. It’s the obvious place to look, but not the best place: I think there are stronger combinations than orange and black.

Funnily enough, the team raced as Repsol Arrows in 1999, so orange was prominent even before Orange. But that colour scheme is better known in MotoGP, on the factory Repsol Honda bike – amongst others. Orange and red though? We can do better.

There’s somewhere else obvious to look for a bit of orange. Somewhere just over the North Sea.

It wasn’t a surprise that A1 Team Netherlands chose orange to represent their country in A1GP. But it was impressive just how pure the orange paintwork was.

The same can be said for the Hummer that Robby Gordon entered in this year’s Dakar. After losing Monster Energy sponsorship to BMW, he was left to run a livery based on his own Speed Energy brand. It was, to say the least, bright. Not bright enough to attract his team mate’s attention when Gordon was broken down on the side of the road in need of help – but that’s another matter.

BTCC

Still not the best use of orange in motorsport though. For that we have to come home, to the British Touring Car Championship. Specifically between 2006 and 2008, when the BTCC was blessed with orange cars from both Team RAC and Team Halfords. Of the two, Team RAC wins it for me: orange and white is a virtually unbeatable combination, isn’t it?

I’m optimistic for 2011, because the Dynojet Racing Toyota Avensis in which Frank Wrathall is contesting the BTCC is looking mentally orange. Perhaps not quite up to the standard of Team RAC, but pretty bold stuff going by the workshop shots from Toyota.

Now there’s a reason to be cheerful.

Photo Credits
Orange Arrows: Klaus Nahr, flickr – Some rights reserved
Repsol Honda: Honda
Robby Gordon Hummer: Hernán Valeriano, flickr – Some rights reserved
Dynojet Racing: Toyota UK, flickr – Some rights reserved

It seems like good news for rally fans this weekend, as Rally Mexico coincides with a free weekend on ESPN.

The freeness comes courtesy of Domino’s Pizza. It is, at least, a more positive way to promote the brand than the incredibly bleak practice of employing people to stand on roundabouts dressed in a Domino’s Pizza box.

Anyway, this is good news if you’re a Sky, Virgin or Talk Talk subscriber. Unfortunately, it doesn’t apply if you rely on Freeview, Top Up TV, Freesat, Freesat from Sky, or BT Vision – so no Rally Mexico for you.

This is all relevant only because, when Dave didn’t renew its TV deal last year, WRC promoters North One Sport awarded the UK rights to a standalone subscription channel. It still appears to be a staggeringly short-sighted move.

But I’ve written about the alternatives before, so I’ll stop banging on about it now.

Photo credit: Shropshire Star

I don’t need to point out again that UK TV coverage of the World Rally Championship being awarded to ESPN is less than helpful. Not only is the channel not free to air, it’s a standalone subscription channel, so not even included in pay TV packages. You either pay about £10 a month just for ESPN, or you don’t get it.

So, much as we’d all like WRC to be back on good old Dave, it isn’t. Alternatives must be found: Rally Sweden is looking like a bit of a bloody corker.

For those with pay TV of some form, there is good news. Despite the deal with ESPN being described as exclusive, the nightly coverage on Motors TV continues in 2011.

But that’s no good for those of us with just Freeview. Now, it’s not hard to find the coverage online. But that is, shall we say, a grey area; so what are the more official alternatives?

WRC.com

Well, it’s pretty much WRC.com. For live updates, the best bet is the stage times section, since by default it shows the latest stage result as it comes in, alongside the updated overall standings. I’d not noticed before, so I don’t know whether they’re new, but there are also live text and split times pages.

The only problem with all that is that WRC.com is a bit temperamental, technologically, and quite often the live pages don’t display any actual data without a refresh or two, or selecting something from a drop down box. It’s just not very slick.

Oh, and the website is getting an absolute hammering this weekend, so it’s coming up as unavailable at times. Possibly because people like me know they won’t be watching a nice highlights programme on Sunday evening, so they’re keeping a closer eye on the rally as it unfolds.

And if you want to hear it unfold, World Rally Radio is bloody wonderful, broadcasting virtually uninterrupted coverage throughout the entire rally. I’ve only ever dipped into it before, but I’ve had it on more for Rally Sweden, and it’s a pretty remarkable operation.

As for official footage, there are some decent clips on the website, but they’re just clips – nothing to convey the story of the rally. The adverts before each video are less than ideal too.

The official podcast does a much better job of discussing the progress of the rally, through nightly instalments. It would be even better if they were on iTunes a bit quicker.

Or available through the WRC App, for that matter. Virtually everything else is available through the app though, including radio, video and live timing. It looks promising so far, but I’ll be putting it through its paces properly for the rest of the weekend, as I won’t be at home, so it will be my only way to follow Rally Sweden.

Previous seasons on YouTube

Back to video, there is an official YouTube channel, but that’s nothing like as up to date as WRC.com. It does have an impressive archive of TV highlights shows though.

So if, on Sunday night, you’re particularly missing the WRC, why not pretend that the last 10 years haven’t happened, and watch nearly an hour of highlights from Rally Sweden 2001. I think I might.

I’ve really enjoyed following this year’s Dakar. Maybe it’s because I’ve paid it more attention than ever before, but I reckon it’s been a bit of a stormer.

Cars

I’m pleased that Nasser Al-Attiyah’s luck held, allowing him to take his first Dakar victory, after coming so close for the last few years. It’s a shame that Carlos Sainz lost a lot of time in the dunes on stage 10, because the battle between the two Volkswagen team-mates had been absolutely stunning.

They had run perilously close together on stage 8, but the end of stage 9 was unbelievable: the pair repeatedly overtook each other, pushing ludicrously hard, their wild and unpredictable paths sending spectators running to safety. It really has to be seen to be believed – which thanks to YouTube is easily done.

The other must-see, as far as I’m concerned, is the huge sand dune at Iquique. The bottom of the dune marked the end of stage 5, and the bivouac was right there. This video taken from the bivouac shows the scale of it brilliantly, and there are scenes of bikes descending the dune in the highlights of the stage.

Looks like fun, doesn’t it? Robby Gordon obviously thought so, because despite having retired from the rally on day 4, he attempted to go up it. He had his Dakar entry number taken away as a result, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to generally hoon around.

Gordon really wasn’t happy about the way he went out of the rally: he stopped on the way to the start of stage 4, but his team-mate and support driver Eliseo Salazar didn’t stop to help. As Gordon says in this video, it’s hard to imagine how Salazar missed the massive bright orange Hummer. As a result, Gordon was not able to start the day’s stage.

The other howler on this year’s Dakar was Guerlain Chicherit destroying the only Mini that BMW had entered this year. Just crashing it would have been bad enough, but doing it on a test run on the rest day was truly remarkable. It was a bit of a mess afterwards.

Bikes

Just as Volkswagen predictably dominated in the cars, taking all three podium places, in the bikes it was all Marc Coma and Cyril Despres – but they made a pretty good race of it, Coma ultimately taking the spoils thanks to navigation problems for Despres.

The unluckiest man had to be Chilean Francisco Lopez Contardo – better known as Chaleco Lopez. He was running in 3rd with only the short final stage to go, but suspension failure meant he had to be towed to the finish by a kindly quad rider. That dropped him to 4th. Poor bloke.

Trucks

There was a great story in the trucks for a while, with the family-run Tatra of Ales Loprais taking wins on stages 6 and 7. He was looking good to take the fight to the huge Kamaz factory team, before going out after losing hours on stage 9. The Dakar world feed did a nice feature on the Loprais entry before his unfortunate departure, which is available online.

Indeed, thanks to the Australian broadcaster, SBS, the whole of this year’s Dakar world feed is up there to watch. Excellent stuff.

Finally, a new UK TV deal has been announced for the World Rally Championship.

After Dave declined to renew its deal which ended last year, there were rumours that it could end up on Five – which wouldn’t have been a bad result.

But no, it’s off to subscription channel ESPN, in an exclusive deal. Which means no WRC on Freeview at all in 2011. Which means I’m grumpy.

Admittedly, the coverage does sound good. An hour-long preview before each rally, then half-hour highlights programmes after each day’s action, and an hour-long review after the rally. Plus live coverage of the new Power Stages. And other odds and sods.

Simon Long, CEO of WRC promoter North One Sport:

“The combination of the innovative content, production and digital promotion that ESPN offers combined with our revamped sport is extremely good news as we seek to reach out to new fans in the UK.”

Okay, so to reach out to new fans, you restrict coverage to a subscription channel with a far smaller reach than any previous UK TV deal. Clever.

I really can’t get over quite how bad this deal is for the WRC. It makes the IRC’s Eurosport coverage look positively mainstream.

The only good news is that I can find no mention of this being a multi-year deal. Fingers crossed for a better package for the 2012 season, then.

The 2011 season

It’s made worse by the fact that the 2011 season has the potential to be rather interesting.

It’s new cars all round, and with Ford running eight Fiestas, and Citroen just four DS3s, there’s a real chance that Ford could have an advantage. Plus there’s the new Mini Countryman.

Driver-wise, there’s the battle of the Sebastiens at Citroen, with Ogier trying to usurp Loeb. Kimi Raikkonen returns, in a DS3 under the ICE 1 Racing banner. The last DS3 goes to Petter Solberg, once again running as the Petter Solberg World Rally Team.

At Ford, Mikko Hirvonen will want to reassert his authority over Jari-Matti Latvala after a rubbish 2010. Mads Ostberg joins Henning Solberg and Matthew Wilson running under the Stobart banner. Ken Block returns with the Monster World Rally Team, Khalid Al Qassimi sticks with Ford, and Dennis Kuipers has the final Fiesta with the new FERM Power Tools World Rally Team.

And at some point we’ll get to see what Dani Sordo and Kris Meeke – and anyone else who gets one – can do with the Mini.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Shame I – and most of the population – won’t be watching.