Back To The Future

Back in 2002, David Richards had a vision for the future of the WRC, and it’s just starting to come true.

- David Evans

The graffiti has faded slightly. But it’s still there. It was a late Nineties or maybe early Noughties message scrawled on a rock face mid-way through a Monte Carlo stage.

‘Richards Go in F1.’

When the paint was still fresh, David Richards was busy polarising opinion, setting purist against pragmatist. Richards’ vision was to compact the sport and repackage it for digital media.

“By 2005,” DR said three years earlier, “you will be able to watch this sport on your mobile telephone. You’ll be able to watch stages live from a variety of onboard cameras or you can choose to take the view from stage-side cameras. Choose which car you want to watch from.”

And then there was the whole interactive plan that had Richards shunning the word ‘gamer’ in favour of ‘virtual competitor’. Sitting at home, he assured me, I would be able to compete in every round of the World Rally Championship in real time, tackling stages, clocking into controls, even selecting the right set-up and tyre choice.

“We’re aiming for one million participants per event,” he said.

And it wasn’t just the virtual or armchair-based supporters he was catering for. In an effort to attract more live consumers, he promoted so-called cloverleaf routes; rallies which ran in and out of a central service location as opposed to a more traditional, linear Tour de France-style of event.

Giving folk the chance to see cars two or even three times each day would bring them flocking.

Richards likened this process to the revolution Kerry Packer brought about in world cricket in the late 1970s. Packer instigated fundamental change; one day matches, and subsequently Twenty20, wouldn’t have happened without him. Some say he saved the game. Some say he ruined it. Either way, cricket’s popularity is enormous thanks to him.