Ford back for WRC next year

[nrc]

Ford will be back in WRC again next year. M-sport with Latvala and Solberg. Surprised to see Citroen snag Hirvonen since he seems to be throwing away as many wins as he scores these days.

Solberg will be a good addition to the Ford team and should add some consistency to Latvala's outright speed. The next couple of years of WRC should be pretty interesting with MINI coming on full force this year and VW the following.

At least I still have some racing to watch.

[datachicane]

Wish they had a decent TV package.

[Methanolandbrats]

Ford will be back in WRC again next year. M-sport with Latvala and Solberg. Surprised to see Citroen snag Hirvonen since he seems to be throwing away as many wins as he scores these days.

Solberg will be a good addition to the Ford team and should add some consistency to Latvala's outright speed. The next couple of years of WRC should be pretty interesting with MINI coming on full force this year and VW the following.

At least I still have some racing to watch.

How do you watch it?

[gerhard911]

WRC is carried on Velocity (formerly Discovery HD Theater). Channel 281 on DirecTV but you may need the HD Extra pack to get it.

[datachicane]

Indeed you do.
I'm stuck downloading mine.

[nrc]

We get Velocity/HDT but unfortunately they delay the events quite a bit. Usually at least several weeks.

[Trevor Longman]

Well next year they will have live streaming coverage of all days of every rally on their website. They did it to test the waters for rally France this year and it was awesome. It worked perfectly. At least that was he plan last month. It way have changed since then because the parent company of North One Sport (the company in charge of the commercial arm of WRC) went into "adminstration" which is pretty much the British equivilent of bankruptcy. They've been looking for new investors ever since but already their european TV package with ESPN has fallen apart and Ford and Mini were reconsidering their involvement. Ford is back but Mini missed the entry deadline last night. Fingers crossed they come to their senses.

I hope this all gets sorted out soon because WRC had some great momentum going for it with Citroen, Ford, Mini, and VW on the way. Plus for the first time we were going to actually be able to see it! I'm still optimistic but things need to change soon with the 1st round coming up in 4 weeks in Monte Carlo.

[opinionated ow]

Don't want to be anal but bankruptcy and administration are two very different proceedings. The latter generally comes about well before the latter to try and save a poorly managed business.

[Trevor Longman]

Oh ok my mistake. I was just repeating what I read on another forum. I'm not an expert on the in and outs of British financing :laugh:

[nrc]

Hadn't heard about the MINI thing. Sounds like it's a screwup rather than a deliberate withdraw, at least from what I've read.

[Trevor Longman]

Yeah I hope all this Mini stuff works out for the best. On a more positive note, I'm a huge Petter Solberg fan so I'm really pumped that he finally got back to a top factory ride like he deserves. I just feel like he does this solely out of passion for the sport. I've never seen someone so happy as him when he does well and to see him have so many punctures and mechanical failures while doing well this year was just heartbreaking. I think hes going to do really well next year with some top equipment.