RE:
>I'm wondering why one would want to use a "gravel car" for
>recce rather than your rally car. Are you really worried
>that the car can't survive a 30 mph pass down the stage? Or
>is it from the other side, organizers don't want stickered
>cars on the roads at that time?
>
>Anyone know the history behind this?
You don't use the rally cars because they are hard to write notes in and are fickle and tempermental beasts that need constant attention. Just like a Formula 1 car, you don't want to use a WRC car more than you have to because they are designed for one purpose and it isn't recce. You need something more suited to doing recce, which currently means something equivalent to a GpN car with some creature comforts, but cages and rally suspension. The other advantage to this is that you then have these cars available during the rally for you gravel notes crews (hence the term gravel cars). Note that Henry Krolikowski's GpN Subaru started life as a Prodrive gravel car.
There was an article in RallyXS a few months ago about Ford and how they use specially prepared Freelanders as their recce/gravel cars on some events.
I assume this rule was to reduce the costs of transporting the extra cars and hiring the gravel notes teams. I expect the teams will want to transport their own street cars (properly set up for recce, of course) anyway, so there won't be any saving in those costs. Also, with the new rules, what team is going to risk the rally car by using it to do the second pass of recce just before you run the stages? If you have a problem, there won't be time to fix it.
Hmm... that brings up an interesting question about Parc Ferme, service, and using the rally car for recce in the morning of each day of competition... I wonder how they plan to resolve that...
Adrian