March 27th - 30th The trip to Argentina may be long for European fans, but, when you combine a land of spectacular scenery with a nation of people always up for a party, you have the ideal location for a World Rally Championship event. It's always a highlight of the season. The rally will be based in Villa Carlos Paz - a small resort town near the stately city of Cordoba but this year there will be no trip to the superspecial held at the River Plate Soccer Stadium in the capital city of Buenos Aires on the Thursday. Also, there will be no superspecial stages in Cordoba stadium, but instead there will be three publicity stages close by the Cordoba stadium in Camping Martin estate. The high altitude of the stages, just as in Mexico, can sap the cars of power as they struggle for breath in the thin air. The blend of high speeds and bumpy terrain place extra stresses on the suspension, and the bodywork can take a pounding. More hazards are provided by the numerous watersplashes, but the sight of a World Rally Car plunging through a water-filled ford is one of the highlights of the season. The weather can also be highly unpredictable and because this year the rally is to be held in the rainy season, the rally route will avoid the most severe water crossings. In the wet, the loose gravel surface can become greasy, catching out the unwary.

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Speed is life

I see the organisers have learned from last year's mistakes when the fog, and desire to have a Super-Special 400 miles away from the rally base, cost an entire day's stages.

3 days is short enough for a WRC event without losing an entire day because the drivers are 400 miles away from their cars!!

:copilot:

Looking foward to this, but a bit early for a thread Willy considering its not the season opener or anything.

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Just trying out the new format
ops:

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Speed is life

Takes a lot of planning this Rallying malarky - got to decide how much beer to take, which big flat rock to sleep on overnight until the stage starts at 7am - the hardcore fans like to be prepared!

The alternitive way of looking at it is - how often do you get the chance to post the very first comment on a brand new section of a forum as popular as this? It's virgin snow this, and me and you have just ahem, written our names in it!

Seriously though - I do love Rally Argentina. Just to be hoped there aren't the same rock-throwing idiots that have marred Argenting in the past and Mexico the other week.

Good work Willy! :hurray:

Oh right, that's a good excuse m8.

Num, we are not attending the rally!

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Hope BP Ford can win, no more Loeb winning please.

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Yeah, fair enough! It could be worse - I could be Norwegian!

I've only once done the proper Rally nutter thing of standing in a forest at 5am, when the stage didn't start til 8! Bizarrely enough me and my 4 mates ended up in background shots on Eurosport - I'd always sung their praises til recently!

That's a good reason m8, join the club.

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Should be a good event by cant see anything than a Loeb win

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I think that may be more to do with the standard of the other drivers than anything else. In seasons gone by there could be as many as 4 or 5 previous World Champions competing at once (McRae, Makinnen, Kunkunnen, Sainz etc) whereas this season there's only Loeb and Solberg have won a championship. I just don't think Latvala, Sordo or Hirvonen are quite ready for a championship push - as impressive as Jari-Matti has looked so far. And until Subaru sort out their reliability problems and Petter has a change in fortune he's not going to challenge either!

I'm not thrilled at the prospect of another Loeb cakewalk but there's no denying the guy's talent!

My thoughts exactly
:iagree:

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Speed is life

Yep a fantastic talent, just he makes rallies a tad predictable like Schumi did with F1.

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I don't think Loeb is gonna have it all easy this year. Maybe sometimes he will pull away by a few points, but then anything can happen--even to him as we've seen. And that's where Latvala can make his mark. The reason why he didn't win in Mexico was because he started in front on Saturday.
Who knows, maybe it'll be the same thing in Argentina, but the surface is harder, so road-sweeping won't be that big of a deal.
The in-team battle at BP Ford is interesting. Hirvonen was annoyed last weekend, I wonder if he can fight back!

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Yep I'm sure Loeb isn't going to have a Schumacher-like season, as both the BP-Ford drivers are capable of challenging for wins, although it remains to be seen whether they can consistent enough over the whole season to challenge for the title.

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