On the face of it, not much is changing in the World Rally Championship for 2025.
Yes, there’ll be a new reigning world champion (and a Rally1 car wearing the #1 for the first time since 2022) but there are no new teams joining the fray and no major regulation tweaks to speak of.
But dig a little deeper, and actually there’s plenty of change afoot at the top of the rallying tree.
This is what’s new in the WRC for 2025:
No hybrid
Let’s start with the biggest thing the drivers will feel this season: no hybrid.
Despite there initially being a contract extension for hybrid to remain part of the Rally1 cars until the end of their homologation cycle in 2027, the stakeholders have voted and the cars will be hybrid-less for 2025 and 2026.
Rally1 cars won't feature hybrid this season
Will that make a difference? To us watching, probably not so much. For the drivers it absolutely will – and it’ll be interesting to see what effect (if any) it will have on the competitive order.
Saturday points dropped
If you’re part of the masses that were so passionately against the 2024 points system, you can rejoice. It has been changed for 2025.
But the revised system hasn’t been trashed completely; instead tweaked to reduce the potential of a rally winner being outscored and a driver scoring big on Sunday despite retiring earlier in the weekend.
Essentially, Saturday points have now been dropped with all championship points claimed on Sunday instead. The top-10 finishers on the event will receive points almost like they used to from 2010-2013 (25 for the winner down to one for 10th, albeit with second receiving 17 points instead of the old 18) with the five fastest drivers on the powerstage all receiving points too.
But the ‘Super Sunday’ element will remain, albeit altered to reward just the five fastest drivers instead of the seven quickest. That means the maximum points haul available per round is higher than it ever has been in the WRC, standing at 35.
New tire supplier
After four seasons as the official tire supplier, Pirelli makes way for Hankook this term
Another addition that will be keenly felt by the drivers, but probably won’t make too much difference for us onlookers, is a change of tire supplier for this season.
After four seasons as the WRC’s exclusive supplier, the Pirelli era is over and Hankook is taking over.
As it stands, we know very little about the new rubber. Both Kalle Rovanperä and Adrien Fourmaux got to try it on last month’s Rallye National Hivernal du Dévoluy and seemed cautiously optimistic, but others like new world champion Thierry Neuville have appeared less impressed.
Monte Carlo in a couple of weeks will provide the first real clue as to how the tires stack up.
New drivers (and team) in
With the exception of Grégoire Munster last year, the WRC hasn’t been a hotbed for new talent being handed a full season in a top-line car of late.
But two new faces will enter the Rally1 fray for 2025.
Pajari is one of two drivers starting their first Rally1 campaign this year
OK, Sami Pajari isn’t exactly new. The Toyota driver already has three Rally1 starts under his belt and excelled – particularly on his debut in Finland with a stage win on his ninth test with a GR Yaris Rally1 – but 2025 will be the reigning WRC2 champion’s first full campaign.
He will also compete for a new second team, Toyota Gazoo Racing 2, which has been registered as a manufacturer.
Josh McErlean is, however, a totally new face to the category, lining up alongside Munster at M-Sport Ford.
Two-time world champion Rovanperä also returns to full-time action after his part-time season in 2024.
Fourmaux’s switch
Perhaps the biggest driver change however is that of Frenchman Fourmaux, who has traded M-Sport for Hyundai.
In a move that had been predicted for many months, Fourmaux’s switch was finally confirmed in December and he wasted little time in making an impression by beating Rovanperä in their warm-up event for the Monte.
What’s also key to consider here is Hyundai’s change in tactic. For the first time in years it will run three full-time drivers, in a bid to neuter the strength of Toyota.
Fourmaux laid down a marker on his Hyundai debut in December
There remains the potential for Hyundai to run a fourth car at times throughout 2025 too (Toyota will run four on every round and sometimes five when Sébastien Ogier competes) but that remains unconfirmed at the time of writing.
Management changes
Intriguingly, the driver market isn’t the only evolution in terms of personnel relative to 2024 either. There’s change afoot in team management as well.
Hyundai has gone for what it’s called a ‘streamlined’ structure, with its WRC program manager Christian Loriaux departing the team in December and finding refuge in Toyota’s rally-raid effort. Pablo Marcos meanwhile returns to the squad to fulfill the team manager role, having left for M-Sport in 2023 and ’24
Toyota has brought in a new face too, with four-time World Rally champion Juha Kankkunen assuming the deputy team principal role to assist Jari-Matti Latvala in his duties. Latvala will attend at least half of the rounds, but is reducing his commitments to focus on a European Historic Rally Championship campaign behind the wheel.
Longer, and more diverse, calendar
For the first time since 2008, the WRC calendar will exceed 13 events this year with a 14-round schedule running from January-November in place for 2025.
Naturally with one extra round now added, there is a new event joining the calendar in the shape of Saudi Arabia, which will be the season finale on the final weekend of November.
But Rally Islas Canarias is also a new one for the WRC, stepping up from the ERC, as is Paraguay, which becomes the first of two events in South America a fortnight before Rally Chile. Estonia also rejoins after a season in the ERC.
To make space, three events have therefore lost their slot on the calendar: Croatia, Poland and Latvia. But Croatia will return in 2026, slotting into the ERC calendar for 2025 in a new October date.
Croatia is one of the events that won't return in 2025, but is set to come back in the future
The Junior WRC calendar has also been updated too, reflecting Croatia’s removal from the main schedule. Central European Rally replaces it as the asphalt round, and is the new double points finale with Acropolis Rally Greece shifting from September to June, while Portugal also replaces Sardinia.
Remote services return
For the first time in years, remote service zones (RSZ) will officially be part of the World Rally Championship in 2025.
Each will be 20 minutes in length with only three mechanics, and the competing crew, able to work on the car in that time.
Only equipment or parts carried inside the car may be used, as well as the following items brought along by team members: tires, laptop computer, an extra car jack, two lifting ramps, mirrors (right and left), four axle stands, shock absorbers, suspension springs, steering arms, suspension arms, hub-carriers and associated connecting parts, steering brackets (fitted on hub-carrier), transversal driveshafts, sensors, screws, nuts and bolts, consumables, wheel nut spanners and torque wrench and hand tools.
CER offered a flavor of remote servicing in October last year
Battery-operated tools including any necessary lighting, the use of brake bleeding and car cleaning equipment as well as the addition of plain water to the car’s systems are also permitted.
Other regulation tweaks
The WRC sporting regulations are like a bible to team managers and sporting coordinators, who will know the intricacies of each regulation inside-out in order to extract any potential advantage from them, or even whistle-blow when a rival controvenes them.
There are no major changes for 2025, but a couple of interesting tweaks worth highlighting.
Perhaps most intriguing is a new ‘obstruction’ segment to the stage interruption regulation, which essentially grants an event’s clerk of the course the ability to award a notional time (just as they would if a stage was paused or canceled) if they are obstructed by a car ahead.
This formalizes the process which occurred in Chile last year, where Yohan Rossel benefited from an adjusted time after Oliver Solberg rejoined the stage just in front of him after changing a tire.
Solberg and Rossel were at the center of contoversy in Chile last year after an alleged obstruction on a stage
Additionally, any competing car traversing the public road without four freely rotating wheels and tires must now “immediately stop, repair the damage if possible, respecting all the applicable regulations or retire”. Mārtiņš Sesks in Chile last year is one example where this regulation would alter a crew’s approach.
Promotional passenger runs on shakedown will reduce for 2025 too, with just one manufacturer car from Toyota, Hyundai and M-Sport Ford required to be available to WRC Promoter and its selected guest.
Route note crews are also no longer allowed to participate in the pre-event recce either.
