Standing on the verge of the World Rally Championship’s seven-round gravel mini-series, points leader Elfyn Evans has put forward his thoughts on how to avoid the inevitable running order debate which will rage from here until Saudi Arabia in November.
Current WRC regulations stipulate the cars will run in championship classification order on the first day of all championship rounds, before the event classification is reversed for the remaining days.
Starting from the Acropolis Rally Greece later this month, Evans is fully aware he will be handicapped as he sweeps loose gravel from the surface to uncover a cleaner, grippier line for his following rivals.
The history of road order
Through the early years of the WRC, running order was decided by the seeding committees of individual events, with previous form on both that rally and the recent championship rounds considered.
With the need for change, certain events introduced their own system – Rally Australia, for example, permitted crews to select their place on the road for the following day’s stages depending on their classification position. If you were leading on day one, you had first choice of where to run on day two.
Rally Australia differed from other events in the early 2000s by allowing drivers to choose their road position
The FIA took control of the situation and reversing the running order was first introduced into the WRC in 2002, when the top 15 drivers in the championship would run at the front of the field on day one. Behind those drivers, the cars were run in seeded order. For subsequent days, the top 15 cars in the overall classification were reversed.
Save for the odd tweak, this rule remained largely in place for a decade. For the 2012 and ’13 seasons, a qualifying stage was used, allowing the fastest driver through shakedown to select their starting position on the road.
After Sébastien Ogier’s domination, the FIA elected to force the championship leader to run first on the road for two days in 2015. That evolved for 2016, when retired priority crews returning under superally rules were run at the front of the field on Saturday and Sunday.
From 2017 onwards, the current plan has remained in place.
There remain calls for a return to the qualifying stage or the consideration of various other strategies, including the potential for an ARA-style lottery, where the crews draw lots to decide the running order.
Evans’ plan
“There’s all sorts of things being brought up [on the subject of running order],” Evans told DirtFish. “I don’t think it’s going to change, unfortunately. It is what it is.
“For me, if none of the other alternatives work, then probably the fairest way is to have a more equal split between the Tarmac and the gravel rallies in the championship – then you don’t have so much of an issue. Right now, we have far more gravel events than we do Tarmac; if we could alter that, then you don’t have such an issue.
“If you’re at the front on a Tarmac round, you know you have a chance – all the way through to the Sunday. If it’s a dry gravel rally, you know it’s going to be very tough.”
Staring down the barrel of Greece, Estonia, Finland, Chile, Paraguay, Sardinia and Saudi Arabia, Evans knows his 20-point advantage at the top of the table could be short-lived.
“Obviously,” he said, “we have to try and find a way to handle that better than we did last year – that was the weak point and the bit that cost us the most during the season. I think Portugal was a good start towards that, but obviously there’s no guarantee that that form can continue over the other rallies because they are quite varied.”
Evans feels the WRC is too gravel-heavy
An overall podium third place and seven from a possible 10 points was definitely a positive from Portugal.
“There were quite a few changes in Portugal,” he said. “Quite a lot has changed with the car as since where we were, especially at the midpoint of last year. And the feeling, while it still wasn’t amazing [first on the road], it seemed to be much easier to deliver a time. There’s been times where I’ve really driven what I feel is hard, but I couldn’t make it fast and efficient.
“I think that’s the main difference where we ended up in Portugal was there was a way to drive efficiently again. And the time wasn’t necessarily coming all by taking more risks in a way, that’s always key. We have to try to find more over the rest of the season, but like I said the gravel rallies are all different in nature.”
In terms of more detail on what’s changed with the car, he offered: “It’s lots of little things, there’s not been one single thing really – there’s not like a huge radical change. The team’s working in all areas of the car, whether it’s damper, whether it’s chassis setup or if it’s diffs, there’s always ideas and things going on in the background.
“There are no [homologation] jokers, so there are new parts as such. It’s just finding a different way of doing things.
“Everything is still so open in the championship. Even if you had an advantage of 60 points going into the second half, if one of your rivals scores the full 35 and you have a stinker than that leads more than halved in one event. It’s far too early to draw any conclusions about the championship, we just need to get on with the second half.”
The Sunday struggle
Sunday is still too valuable in the current points system, feels Evans
Evans is struggling to see the ‘super’ aspect of Super Sunday on WRC rounds right now.
While he’s quick to admit the current allocation of points is a considerable improvement of the system delivered for 2024, he still feels the final day of a WRC round is worth too much.
“I still think Sunday has too many points on offer,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I think what’s happened with [Super] Sunday is a real positive for the championship to have everybody still fighting, but the reward is just too great.
“It’s good to have the powerstage, but maybe the points for Sunday should be a maximum of seven or eight in total; it could be a five and a three for a powerstage and a Sunday win. It’s better than it was a couple of years ago [in 2024] when a win was, in my opinion, almost worthless, but I think there’s a general feeling among the drivers that it’s still a bit too generous.”
Drivers can currently score up to 10 additional points from Sunday’s classification, with the top five on Sunday’s leg and the powerstage collecting bonus points. In 2024, the top seven scored points on Sunday’s leg while rally classification points were banked on Saturday.
