[incizarry]

Crunch, we've gone through a few years of rallies been decided by minutes, so the advent of S2000 allowed rallies to be really close, which in turn means the drivers are committed 110%, which in turn looks far more spectacular now than before. Plus add in the fact that the cars sound awesome. I think what's helped us here is that 2 of the cars are locally built, the Polo and Auris, so the price is down a bit compared with the European models and they are competitive against the likes of the Fiesta. I personally, and I'm sure others will agree, have always found the N4 Imprezas and Lancers very boring to watch and they are very expensive to buy and run.

I would say our events averaged about 35 to 40 entries per event in total. The thing is normally the lower classes are very well supported and the top class has 3 or 4 cars, whereas now our top class was having about 16 cars per event and the lower classes were thinning out. It's a weird situation I've never seen before here.

We originally went over to the FIA classes in about 1998 because we were trying very hard to get a round of the WRC, and for some reason it was felt that if our classes were the same there would be a chance. However this brought in the complication and cost of homologations, something we never had before, it was just "these are the rules, make a car to fit one of them". Now it's been decided that the chances of getting a WRC event are zero for various (I always thought bleedingly obvious) reasons, so we're now looking into doing a combination of FIA and local rules which match the FIA rules, much like the British Touring Car Championship and their BTC cars matching the S2000 cars of the World Touring Car Championship. So to answer your question of whether it makes it stronger or not, I'd say in this case (S2000) it did, but in the previous case (Formula 2) it didn't, and we'll have to wait a few years to see if our future approach works too.