M-Sport is ready to push the button on developing a Ford Puma Rally2 – just as soon as the FIA implements regulation change to allow spaceframe chassis into the World Rally Championship’s second tier.
Rally2 rules are set for an overhaul with the category fast running out of cars available, with B-segment metal becoming increasingly less popular with manufacturers. Ford ceased production of the Fiesta – the current base of its Rally2 car – in July last year.
“A Ford Puma Rally2 is our target,” M-Sport team principal Richard Millener told DirtFish. “As it stands [as a production car] the height and weight of the car would be prohibitive for Rally2. The only way this can work is with a Rally1 style tubular chassis.”
Millener said the move to mirror Rally1’s safety cell represented the most sensible way forward.
“It’s the safest way to do it,” he said. “And doing that, building spaceframe chassis and bolting scaled panels to it is a great way to futureproof the category. If you guarantee those rules for, say, 10 years, it will help lower the price of the chassis through larger-scale production and economies of scale over that time period.
“Since we started building these Rally1 cars, I think it’s fair to say all the teams have learned an awful lot about streamlining, evolving and improving the process. All of the Rally1 chassis are handbuilt, but what’s to say we couldn’t add mechanisation into the process for Rally2? It would make more sense given that the market and demand for these cars is so much bigger.”
M-Sport’s Fiesta is one of the longest standing cars on the market, with its roots all the way back in the original Super 2000 car from 2009.
