Well after a great weekend at RallyGB, I'm back home. Really enjoyed the event, despite the weather, the top boys are something else - simply awesome, really noticeably quicker. Makes you realise what a fantastic sport this is, and more needs to be done for it's long term health.

Bought a newspaper on the way home, and nothing about the Rally, nothing on 5Live/Talksport - organisers need to pull their finger out - there was a time, not long ago when there was lots of decent coverage. Agree with Jerry Williams column in this weeks MNews, the clashes with F1 are hurting the sport.

Feel truly sorry for Seb Loeb....

Another championship, another superb win on what let's not forget is not his natural surface and hardly anyone other than die-hard rally fans know about it. Truly disgraceful.

If Simon Long utters another sentence about how great the coverage of the championship is now, people MUST start posing qustions to back to him as to what planet he is living on?

Anyway...one chapter closed...that of the 2L Turbo WRC cars and now on to a new chapter of 1600cc turbo WR Cars....

How to turn a National iconic sporting event into an anonymous parochial event - advice and enquiries to IMS/FiA/NorthOne.......you won't be disappointed!!

Is this really it? Just Motors terrible coverage?

Looks like it. Dave had the rights to show it for three years, and that expires the end of the year.

The WRC will never capture the public's attention if it's not available on any mainstream TV channels.

I can't make it through a single day recap when watching the motors coverage. I remember they were hyping how they were gonna show extra incar footage and I thought it was gonna be great. Too bad they didn't tell us they were going to use the sorriest commentator possible instead of the usual north one commentator.

It´s just sad what happens to Rally! Who had this stupid idea with MotorsTV? Hardly surprising that the drivers don´t find much sponsors when you can´t get to see the Rally in free TV!

Again I don´t get it why one can watch some stages of the IRC on Eurosport but nothing about the WRC?? This is just sooo damn stupid!

Same as that, its impossible to listen to him for an hour and he misses so much:
On the day 2 coverage motors showed loeb hitting a chicane, No Comment
While he was talking you heard solberg shouting at Patterson to hurry up with the notes, Didnt notice that either.....

If we could have the Dave coverage, every day, on BBC3, nearly everyone has that now anyway.....

Actually, with the end of the Dave contract – the power brokers of the sport are at a crossroads. The recent RallyGB proved just how far off the radar the sport and event have fallen. I hope everybody concerned bought all the national daily papers, and struggled to find the event reported. Now is the chance, just for once to forget money, and think of the sport. Yes, I’m naïve – but they should virtually give it away to a free-to-air station. With a live stage on each event next year, I’ve read that Dave weren’t that keen on this.

Let me guess - North One wanted some extra money for it...

Surely not. They really need to take their collective heads out the sand. The sport is about as popular as cheese-rolling and bog snorkelling. Go on a lot of car/motorsport sites/forums and a lot of people were simply unaware RallyGB happened. How is that selling the sport?

More annoying because it's still very exciting to watch no matter how the championship goes. Especially when remembering that last years Rally GB was a winner takes all situation.

Absolutely, it's fantastic - the top boys are really on it.

So high profile was the WRC, I didn't realise the British leg was happening until after it had finished!!!

Not like the old days when the the last day of the RAC rally was shown live on the BBC. The WRC is a shadow of its former self.

If even the dedicated motorsport followers that reside on BBs such as this one don't notice/realise/remember that there's a WRC event taking place, clearly that's symptomatic of a problem much bigger than just a lack of decent coverage. Heck, I haven't had [live] F1 coverage in four years but somehow I've still managed to remember every GP during that time period and even enjoyed some of them.

At least in Wales, the BBC covered Rally GB. You can find it on i-player - it was broadcast on Monday. Uses the regular footage plus some interesting extra stuff (an interview with Phil Mills) and a quick highlights of the season segment.

Pity BBC Wales can't do every round.

Yeah watched it on Sky, but was able to watch again yesterday in I-player. Obviously, most of the footage is still filmed by NorthOne, but the other BBC bits were good, Mark James is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic presenter, asks the right questions, the perfect frontman for the sport. Now all we need is for the BBC to do the whole season with Mark presenting. Here’s hoping. When Channel4 got the coverage Mark was dropped as he wasn’t deemed ‘trendy enough’.

Agreed. Mark has always been a superb presenter of Rallying and knows his subject inside out and back to front, unlike that plank Neil Cole and a few other presenters currently involved in the championship.

In terms of rally presenters currently, my thoughts:
Good:
Mark James (Presenting - One of the best Rallypresenters there has been for years and remains so)
Becs Williams (World Rally Radio - Nice polished presenter now, great audio, but just needs to love the 'sport' a bit more rather than just WRC)
Julian Porter (Interviews - Ex-driver knows his stuff and asks good questions at stage finishes)
Greg Strange (Interviews - been involved around the sport since the dawn of time and created World Rally Radio)

Average:
Paul King (Footage commentary - Pretty good but a tendency to get a little too excited and the volume of him overtakes the images)
Robbie Head (Commentating - Ex-driver with good clear presentation spoken from experience)
Jon Desborough (Presenting - pretty good, but needed to know a lot more about the sport)
Tony Mason - (Commentating - Ex-WRC commentator and the grand daddy of British WRC coverage. However annoyed many with his 'tie-up' with the Simmonite Sisters and family! cough cough...

Bad:
Neil Cole - Knows squat about the sport and looks lost in front of the camera.
Simon Hill - Ditto about the sport and as such, cannot deliver a quality commentary.
Colin Clark - The self proclaimed 'Voice of Rallying'.... When he truly learns about the sport and stops shouting, he will be bearable.
Mike Brewer - Used car salssman becomes presenter... too wideboy to be seen as professional.

Therefore.... the perfect team in my opinion for WRC TV coverage would be:

Lead presenter - Mark James
Commentators - Becs Williams with possibly Paul King alongside.
Interviewer Stage ends - Julian Porter
Interviewer in service parks/colour pieces - Greg Strange.

Job done!

The only bit i'd really disagree with is the Bad: Neil Cole part.
While he hasn't been around the sport for 10 years has shows a genuine enthusiasm for the sport and enjoys a genuine raport with the drivers - they seem to like talking to him. How many other presenters, in any sport, can you genuinely say that about?
I've followed rallying all my life, sat through all kinds of rally coverage, both the good and the bad, and I genuinely believe that the current Dave highlights format, but with a programme every night (maybe just 30 mins in length), shown on a terrestrial channel, is what this sport needs to help move back towards the level of popularity it once had.

As for Mike Brewer, only classifying him as 'bad' borders on a compliment!