Maciej Woda, M-Sport Poland managing director and the man in charge of the Junior World Rally Championship, has confirmed there will be a facelift upgrade coming for the Ford Fiesta Rally3.
In use as the JWRC’s spec car since the start of 2022, the Fiesta Rally3 is currently without competition in the FIA’s four-wheel-drive Rally3 category but Renault will soon have its Clio Rally3 on the market.
M-Sport will not be resting on its laurels once its customer base has another option to look at, as there is “improvements of Rally3 which hopefully will come soon”.
Woda revealed to DirtFish that “the next step is to offer an upgrade package to the customers which I think it’s no secret that we are working on and we’re looking to implement”.
M-Sport plans to introduce the upgrade package this year, available to owners of the existing Rally3 and also new buyers of the car.
“It is a strong car but in the current world you cannot be sitting with the same product for too long as then people are getting bored and the competition comes and so on,” he went on to explain.
“So we’ve been looking at what we can improve, how we can make the car better. In the meantime before [Ford’s production of the] Fiesta has been completely shut down there was a facelift, so there will be a facelift coming to Fiesta Rally3 with some performance improvements as well.”
While the JWRC remains a centrally-run spec series, once the Clio arrives on the scene then the RC3 class at WRC rallies could be won by cars from either manufacturer.
“Honestly, I can’t wait,” Woda said of the prospect of competition on the stages from the new Clio.
“I don’t want to sound cocky because I hope it won’t bite me back but I’m really looking forward to see the competition between Clio Rally3 and Fiesta Rally3, and I just hope that the class is going to get bigger and bigger because there were comments that I heard people saying ‘ah yeah, I would go to Rally3 but it’s only Fiesta, I don’t want to be competing in the same car as everybody else’.
“So I just hope it will be good for the market. A lot of people are just pushing for Rally2, Rally2, Rally2 and with no disrespect they cannot use Rally2, and they would be feeling much better [and] they would be actually more competitive.
“I’ve seen it in some of the championships where people move from Rally2 to Rally3, they have gone faster, and they move from Rally3 to Rally2 and they are still clocking the same stage times in much more expensive, much faster car.
“It just shows that Rally2 needs a big commitment right now – you need to have a driver who is really committed and is really on it. Rally3 is an easy car to drive, and it’s an enjoyable car to drive.”
