Rallying is a crowd-puller. Apart from the high-performance machines, the talented drivers and the jumps, rallying is a spectator-friendly form of motorsport.
Internationally, this is evidenced inthe thousands of fans lining the stages. In Europe, with the largest fan base, they have been spoilt with the number of rallies taking place over the past few months.
It was estimated that for the IRC Gecko Ypres Rally in June, 60,000 rally enthusiasts attended the first of the asll-asphalt events on the Intercontinental Rally Challenge’s 2011 calendar in Belgium. For the WRC Neste Oil Rally Finland, just a handful number of weeks later, some 300,000 people flocked to the stages over the course of the three-day rally.
The WRC ADAC Rallye Deutschland drew 190,000 spectators (but this was slightly down on 2010’s edition). Another crowd-puller was last weekend’s IRC Barum Czech Rally that attracted 300,000 fans!
For the upcoming WRC Rallye De France, which brought in 200,000 fans when Sebastien Loeb claimed his seventh World Rally Championship title on his home event, is sure to increase with two Frenchmen aiming to outperform the other in a dramatic and intense battle. Sebastien Ogier is only 25 points behind his teammate, and organisers are expecting a ten percent increase in spectators later this month.