KEY POINTS:
Things must be looking dire for world rallying when one of the stalwarts of the World Rally Championships, Subaru, decide to unceremoniously pull the pin on the sport that made its name.
For 20 years Subaru, in the guise of the Prodrive-run team, have been synonymous with rallying. The decision to end their involvement comes hot on the heels of Honda pulling out of Formula One and Suzuki's recent announcement they too are abandoning the sport.
During their time in rallying, Subaru amassed six WRC titles including those won by Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg.
"This sudden decision is a response to the widespread downturn affecting the industry," Subaru said.
Morrie Chandler, the New Zealander in charge of world rallying, is not overly bothered about the future of his sport, in fact he's quite positive.
"Initially the news made us all take a deep breath but Suzuki's had a difficult year and they signalled halfway through they wouldn't mind a year off," said Chandler yesterday.
"While I was a little disappointed with Suzuki's decision I wasn't desperately surprised, but Subaru's did surprise me. They haven't had a lot of success over the past five years and the new car didn't deliver what everyone was expecting."
In 2010 new technical rules are to be introduced to get the cost down by at least half. The cars will be cheaper and there will be a raft of other changes, and teams can either run existing machines or the new cars. By 2011 everyone will have to use the new cars and abide by the new rules, which in a nutshell means teams can go racing only with what the man in the street can buy off the shelf.
"Despite what a number of people are saying, there's a lot of support for where WRC are trying to go and I'm confident it'll all work from there," said Chandler.
Five-time WRC champion Sebastien Loeb has publicly stated he doe not want to be involved with the S2000 car, which in effect is a Group N production-based car, as he wants "to go racing".
"At the end of the day if he's skilful enough he'll make the type of car we're specifying interesting to watch. That's what it's all about really, take your toy and make it go," was Chandler's riposte.
"The big message is to show that we make sure our sport is not manufacture reliant."
