The FIA has confirmed that a qualifying stage is under consideration for the 2027 World Rally Championship.
WRC ran a qualifying stage in 2012-13 to set the road order on gravel events, where running higher up the order often poses a grip disadvantage from cleaning loose gravel away from the top surface of the road.
Drivers were allowed to select their road position for the opening leg of the rally, but the European Rally Championship, which has had a qualifying stage for a significant time period, moved away from this approach in 2024. Instead, the 15 fastest drivers in qualifying are reversed to set road order on gravel events, while the fastest 15 run in qualifying order on asphalt rounds.
With the new WRC27 cars being built by Toyota, RallyOne Project and RMC Motorsport all running Rally2 componentry, and M-Sport set to upgrade its Fiesta Rally2 to ‘Kit’ spec with improved aerodynamics for next season, this could allow for a car far down the running order to have a large condition advantage over front-running cars.
FIA road sport director Emilia Abel confirmed that the reinstatement of a qualifying stage for the WRC is being evaluated, though no decision has yet been made.
The ERC currently uses a qualifying stage, where the 15 fastest drivers are reversed on gravel or run in order on Tarmac
“This is part of the sporting regulation discussion,” said Abel. “We are currently in the phase that all options are on the table, but this will first of all need to be aligned with the Promoter, then with a commission, and then validated by that.”
Toyota would stand to lose most from the qualifying stage not being reintroduced: it will be the only entrant competing in every round of the WRC next year with a WRC27-spec car and is therefore likely to be near the front of the road order at most gravel events, should that still be set by championship order.
“What’s maybe important is for everyone to understand the magnitude of the situation,” said Tom Fowler, Toyota’s WRC technical director.
“If we look at a gravel rally today and you take car number one in a Rally1 car, and you take your first Rally2 car running in maybe 12th position, the Rally1 car can just about beat the Rally2 car in 12th position – and the difference in power is 100 horsepower. So it means that the difference in road order currently between one and 12 is equal to the performance of 100 horsepower.
“In the technical regulations, if you have the same power, you can never find this level of performance. It’s impossible. So you have to manage it in a sporting way to understand that if you’re going to compete with cars with the same power to weight ratio, the cars that are competing have to be in similar conditions, which can only be done from the sporting side.
“I think the target is clear for the sport: we have to make sure that, at the end, the most competitive driver in the most competitive car is still able to win. And any falsification of this by a strange road order is not really reasonable.”
Reigning world champion Sébastien Ogier had already highlighted to DirtFish concerns over road order continuing to be determined by championship order once Rally1 WRC27 cars were reintroduced.
“Imagine you have a Rally2 kit starting 25th on the loose gravel,” said Ogier. “They’re going to have a massive grip advantage and obviously going to be much quicker than the Rally1 [WRC27].
“If you go back to that, for me, you will need to reintroduce qualifying and find a way for a more fair starting order position. Because otherwise, it’s going to be a big mess and very difficult to manage this balance of performance between cars.”
