Last week, the FIA delivered its verdict on what a WRC27 car will look like. But now that we’ve had a week to consider all the angles, what do we make of rallying’s future direction?
Is a Rally1 chassis with Rally2 running gear the right way forward? Or the sort of step back that will offer little but frustration for fans and engineers alike? And what of the longer-term view?
A 10-year homologation cycle is a first – surely that offers the sort of stability the World Rally Championship has been crying out for? Or is it a broad-stroke shot at making one size fit all, with no prescribed power train regulations to accompany a decade of a spaceframe chassis?
Here’s what our team of writers think:
It’s rallying’s best chance of being mainstream
There’s a conundrum the rallying world faces to make its economic proposition viable, one that it has practically no control over.
The average car buyer fails to understand what they need and subsequently makes poor decisions once on the forecourt. And this has broken what has, for most of rallying’s history, been core to its economic model.
In Europe, just shy of 50% of new car registrations are in the SUV/off-road segment. In the Americas, that number is even worse. The majority of these people are not farmers who need a Land Rover or a pick-up truck for criss-crossing fields. For reasons beyond my comprehension, a washing machine on wheels has became a status symbol.
This is a problem for us.
It broke the baseline model of how you build a rally car. Not since 1986 has an entire generation of WRC vehicles come first and the road car been an afterthought. Until Rally1’s introduction changed the game, the mass-market vehicle existed first and then you built a rally car from that.
Trying to take a flabby Chelsea tractor designed to be a living room on wheels and making into a finely poised motorsport machine is not a viable solution. We need to do something else. Space frames increase the cost – but for me, there is no debate here. A viable alternative no longer exists. So long as your objective is to attract manufacturers to directly participate in rallying’s top level, it’s space frame or bust.
The alternative would be to decide rallying is to be something else: purely customer racing. Continuing to build top-level cars out of appropriate road cars, as the pool of suitable vehicles shrinks and automakers move away from the core segments most rally cars were born from, means the marketing value of the championship decreases.
I look at the move to Rally2 powertrain components as a necessary evil – a means to try and limit costs, even if not ideal. Current engines will be missed – they were mightily expensive but also deliver a far more enthralling experience for the fan standing by the side of a stage.
OK, we’re stuck in a paradox here. Research and development gets ludicrously expensive in a hurry if innovation is left unchecked by technical regulations, but it can also be a point of attraction for manufacturers. Should we still be worried about road relevance?
Probably not. Rallying is fundamentally incompatible with battery electric. You ask a manufacturer if they could build an all-electric car that comes close to Rally1 performance and able to to WRC itineraries and the answer remains no. Time to do something else.
Sorry to bring our oft-loathed cousin into this discourse but Formula 1 has manage to make itself impervious to road relevance. Look at Alpine – from 2026 it’s not even going to use Renault Group-built engines! Its road car offering will be full EV soon and it’s going to run a V6 Mercedes hybrid!
The way I see it, we had two choices. Give up on the WRC being a public-facing sport that tries to be attractive to the masses (and by extension, manufacturers having flashy factory team efforts) and lean into being an affordable, customer-centric championship with plenty of entrants – basically, what Rally2 is.
Or, give up any pretence that top-level rallying in 2030 will have anything to do with the average car on a forecourt. Because it won’t. Focus instead of manufacturers being able to show off their brand – not their technology, necessarily – in a sport that can position itself as more rugged, more of an endurance test, less prim and proper than Formula 1.
We’re going for the latter. Or at least I hope that’s what this is. Just as well: the former would mean rallying shrinking in size and in potential.
Alasdair Lindsay
FIA has played it the best way possible
Stability. Finally.
Hybrid? Been and gone. Protracted debate over 2027 and beyond, finally done.
Hybrid units are a thing of the past, as Rally1 cars will continue without them in 2025 let alone 2027
Or is it? Sort of. One thing we do know is that, in the 2036 season (when Kalle Rovanperä has tipped into his late 30s) he and the rest of the World Rally Championship will still be driving a spaceframe chassis based on the current Rally1 regulations.
The stability and potential of what’s coming chassis-wise in 2027 offers both commonsense and the opportunity to innovate.
We’ve seen the onset of shells bearing little resemblance to anything a manufacturer makes competing in Dakar for a while now, it’ll be good to see WRC potentially being given the same thinking. And the ability for teams to homologate cars is similarly a huge step forward.
Even better in terms of a carmaker’s cost-benefit analysis of WRC27 is the news that building such a car would also mean a ready-made World Rallycross challenger.
But where’s the devil? Try the detail.
This is where we’re slightly short. Yes, the safest rally cars in the sport’s history have been futureproofed, but what’s going to be powering them a few years into the next homologation cycle?
Hmm… That’s another question entirely and one that’s very difficult to answer for anybody in the industry. If you can tell me precisely what the next power train trend is going to be, I can think of a number of people around the world who would be very glad to talk to you. Ultimately, the FIA has played this one the only way possible: to be all things to everybody. Nothing is off the table, providing it fits in the chassis and can remain there for a decade.
Initially, it’s going to be the engine and underpinnings of a Rally2 car. That’s sensible. Right now, the WRC needs to cut its cloth, make itself more affordable and deliver more workable return on investment.
Initially, the next generation of cars won’t be as fast as today, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be even more spectacular. Once again, I’m calling for inefficient aero that looks cool but doesn’t generate anything like current levels of downforce and Hankook, make those tires harder, stiffer and with less grip.
Let’s have 2027 cars, edgier and more of a tricky beast to tame.
David Evans
Regulations aren’t the key to WRC’s success
The other day while scrolling on X, I stumbled across an advert from the early 2000s that someone had reposted. It was from Peugeot, celebrating its back-to-back-to-back WRC manufacturers’ titles from 2000-2002.
Displaying a side-by-side of a 206 WRC and the regular 206 for the street, the ad simply read: “World Rally Champion 2000, 2001 and 2002. We’ve just washed it.”
It was catchy, clever and relatable. All things that, sadly, I don’t think are particularly true of rallying today. Is that all down to the fact Rally1 is too expensive and not road relevant enough? Maybe, hence why I’m cautiously optimistic that the 2027 regulations are a step in the right direction.
Mainstream interest is not what it was in the WRC and is the most important thing to reverse, argues Barry
But I’m equally unconvinced that technical regulations hold the real key to a championship’s success.
Of course, the right set of regs can unleash a championship’s potential – just look at the World Endurance Championship’s current boom in manufacturer interest.
But then look at Formula 1. Cadillac is on its way to the party but not exclusively because it is attracted by the regulations; more by the popularity of the championship as a whole.
F1 is not necessarily at its peak today in terms of competition, but yet it has never been more popular. What’s more appealing to a manufacturer than to be involved in a form of motorsport that everybody’s talking about?
To use a real-world example, my girlfriend had no interest in motorsport before she met me, but now she loves F1. Not rallying – the sport that I actually work in and occasionally offer insight to.
The WRC doesn’t have a new generation of fans itching to get involved, and for me that’s a far more pressing problem going forwards than what the cars will look like or what they’re powered by.
Luke Barry
