IMG say bye

[hoffman66]

For some fans this will be sad, but I think for most long term, true rallycross fans, the fact that IMG are moving away from promoting rallycross is overwhelmingly a good thing.

Apparently their parent company is in 7 billion of debt so no shock there then.

They did a lot of good, improved the presentation, the show aspect, brought in and encouraged manufacturers, better coverage. And mainly brought rallycross to bored normal racing fans in a way it had never been exposed before. So bravo for that.

But look at what they did wrong.

Ignored 50 odd years of history, by forcing old tracks to come up with insane money to host event's, that alone was unforgiveable. Tried to make what is basically a Scandinavian series, into a world championship, it never really was at any stage.

The tracks they wanted and ,made were awful, car park style tracks that encouraged contact had no character or style and they chased GP venues at the expense of all else, so many venues came and went as rallycross never really did pay except maybe in Sweden and France, yet it was sold no doubt as a financial winner, hence loads came and went not giving the sport a chance to grow or expand.

They chased the car makers, fine, but they did it at the expense of the private guys, and the support series that were totally relegated at times to no coverage, also rans.

Not even allowed to be on track together which is pathetic to say the least, elitist rubbish and in no way reflects the normal ways of rallycross.

When they lost electric they basically lost interest, went though the motions and allowed the teams to get on with it, which is honestly when it has been at its best, the past year and a half has been superb, unpredictable, some better tracks and better coverage for supports.

But I think the biggest thing they did to lose fans here was the Silverstone Speed event fiasco, drastically over priced, awful track, treated the home of rallycross like a pawn and got their just deserts by totally misreading existing fans and the general public at large.

I will not be at all sorry to see them go.

But I do hope a proper old style ERC series, starting afresh, using existing venues, (at a much reduced cost to allow them to make money) and current ones, maybe make the cars a bit cheaper, bring in better support series ERC could once again be pretty big.

There is no doubt that at the start IMG got it right, they managed to get rallycross to people that had never seen it, made it exciting the buzz was amazing, that could happen again. But it needs doing carefully, not do it, splash it all over a tshirt, market it, sell it to the highest bidder, make countries bid for tracks, all in one year.

They ran too far too soon and paid the price.