The World Rally Championship’s testing regulations should be reviewed to stop teams ‘wasting money’ on entering national events, according to Hyundai WRC program manager Christian Loriaux.
Currently, in an attempt to restrict costs, the rules limit each Rally1 manufacturer to 21 days of testing per year outside of their nominated permanent test sites.
These permanent locations, containing up to 12 kilometers [7.4 miles] of test road, do not have to be situated close to a team’s factory, however. Despite being based in Germany, Hyundai has chosen to use roads in Finland not far from those of locally-sited rival Toyota, while M-Sport has use of Greystoke Forest near its Cumbrian headquarters.
With the teams’ own test roads only being relevant for a handful of rallies on the calendar, and testing elsewhere being limited, they have all taken to entering cars on national-level rallies as an opportunity to gather more applicable mileage in the lead-up to a WRC round.
Toyota and Hyundai both have permanent test sites in Finland
So far in 2024, Toyota has fielded Elfyn Evans and Kalle Rovanperä on the Arctic Rally ahead of Rally Sweden and Evans on the HYAcenter Rally prior to Rally Finland.
Hyundai has meanwhile entered Andreas Mikkelsen on the Rally di Alba before Croatia; Dani Sordo on Rali Terras d’Aboboreira in preparation for Portugal; Ott Tänak on Rally Estonia and Esapekka Lappi on the Lietuva Rally in the lead up to Latvia,;Thierry Neuville on Rally Ciudad de Granada in Spain and the Herbst Rally in Austria; and this weekend, both Neuville and Mikkelsen will drive at Rallye La Nucía – Mediterráneo in Spain.
For M-Sport, Adrien Fourmaux’s outing at Rallylegend provided useful asphalt mileage before the Central European Rally.
In most of these cases, only one Rally1 car has been present on each national event, ‘competing’ against local Rally2 drivers. In some instances, Rally1 teams have withdrawn after the final stage, ensuring the overall victory goes to a crew considered more worthy.
Loriaux suggests that a heavy reliance on a combination of a permanent test site and taking part in national rallies is not cost-effective.
“For me, what doesn’t make sense is the testing rule with the permanent base because it’s forced manufacturers in some ways to try to make their own Tarmac and gravel test tracks which defeats the object of saving money,” he told DirtFish.
Loriaux thinks current rules have forced manufacturers to effectively create their own test tracks
“So I think the testing regulations should be reviewed to really save money and not having to do silly pretend rallies where you have everybody [travel] out for a week to achieve 100km [62.1 miles] of stages. It’s a waste of money, that.”
The implication appears to be that if the use of permanent test sites were more restricted, offset with an increase to the 21 days of general testing permitted, teams would be less likely to take part in national events in search of WRC-relevant mileage.
Potentially complicating the testing debate ahead of 2025 is the possibility that hybrid could be dropped from Rally1 cars. Sébastien Ogier has questioned the wisdom of making such a change so close to the start of next year given the limited chance to test the modified cars, but Loriaux does not feel that extra testing days would be required.
“I don’t think we need to test more without hybrid,” he said. “If anything, in some ways it’s easier without hybrid. For sure, the car is less complicated and the settings are easier, so I wouldn’t say we need more days if we take [out] the hybrid.”
