This week the World Rally Championship travels to Rally Chile for a last dance on gravel in this 2024 season.
It will be just the third visit the WRC has made to the South American nation and the flowing forest stages in the mountains of the Biobío region. On Chile’s debut in May 2019 in late fall in the southern hemisphere, the dark muddy roads drew comparisons to Wales and New Zealand. Fast forward to its return three-and-a-half years later, in the middle of the Chilean spring, and the drier weather delivered a surprise for some with particularly abrasive conditions.
Here is everything you need to know ahead of round 11.
Entry list
Total 45 crews
10 Rally1 crews
18 Rally2 crews (16 WRC2)
4 Rally3 crews (3 WRC3)
Rally1
Sami Pajari gets his second Rally1 outing
The Rally1 field enters double figures once again with 10 cars being flown to Chile. Toyota enters four of them with a line-up that has undergone a significant change since the entry list was originally published.
The trip to South America was always in Kalle Rovanperä’s part-time schedule for this season, with Sébastien Ogier then joining him and Elfyn Evans as part of his commitment to contest every remaining rally to the end of the year. Following Acropolis Rally Greece, Toyota bosses made the tough decision to leave Takamoto Katsuta at home for one round, but honored their commitment to a four-car entry in Chile by handing another start to Sami Pajari after his impressive debut at Secto Rally Finland.
M-Sport also provides a deserved bonus outing for another rookie, Mārtiņš Sesks, after his starring drives at Rally Poland and Rally Latvia. Like in Poland, his Puma Rally1 will be hybrid-free as he lines up alongside Adrien Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster once more.
At Hyundai, Esapekka Lappi returns to the line-up for his fifth start of the season alongside championship leader Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak, the winner of both previous WRC contests in Chile.
WRC2
Yohan Rossel needs to outperform Oliver Solberg on Chile's abrasive roads
The 16-car WRC2 field features an even split of eight of the championship’s regular contenders and eight locals.
For Oliver Solberg, this is the seventh and last rally that he’s allowed to nominate as a scoring round and, with a three-point lead in the championship over Sami Pajari, he can put the title out of reach with a win in Chile. Pajari’s one remaining event had always been planned for Rally Japan, even before he was handed a Rally1 drive in Chile.
Yohan Rossel is 25 points behind Solberg with one more scoring opportunity to follow after Chile, so needs to significantly outscore the Swede in South America to keep his title hopes alive. Rossel’s DG Sport Citroën team-mate Nikolay Gryazin has entered every rally bar one this season but has saved himself three points-scoring opportunities for the end of the year – with a 63-point deficit to Solberg and 75 points left up for grabs.
Jan Solans can no longer catch Solberg but has the chance to improve upon fifth place in the standings driving the only Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 in Chile. Otherwise, the field is comprised entirely of Škodas and Citroëns.
Solberg is joined under the Toksport Škoda tent by Gus Greensmith and Pierre-Louis Loubet, both looking to build on fairly torrid campaigns so far – the former’s Safari win aside. Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Fabrizio Zaldivar are the other WRC2 regulars driving the Fabia RS Rally2.
The Citroën C3 Rally2 is the chariot of choice among the Chilean contingent, at least for brothers Alberto and Pedro Heller and the Rosselot clan of brothers Emilio and Tadeo and their nephew Gerardo – a three-time starter in Junior WRC this year. Jorge Martínez drives a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, with Eduardo Kovacs and Argentina’s Martin Scuncio in older Fabia Rally2 evos.
WRC3
WRC3 pacestter Diego Domínguez heads the third-tier entry
Three cars are entered in WRC3 in Chile, including the championship leader Diego Domínguez. After back-to-back wins in Portugal, Sardinia and Poland earlier in the year, the Paraguayan has waited until the only South American round of the championship to register to score points once more in his Ford Fiesta Rally3.
Domínguez will face competition from Corsican Renault Clio Rally3 driver Ghjuvanni Rossi, who finished second in Monte Carlo, and Peruvian Fiesta man Eduardo Castro, who – like Rossi – last appeared in Sardinia.
Itinerary
Rally Chile remains based in the city of Concepción, which – after last year’s visit to Los Ángeles – will also host the ceremonial start on Thursday evening. That will follow the morning’s shakedown at Campamento Conuco, a previously unused stage to the north-east of the city.
The opening day of the rally on Friday is almost identical to 2023. A loop of three stages to the south-east is run twice either side of mid-day service and totals 70 miles of competitive action. The longest stage of the loop is now known as San Rosendo, where it ends, rather than Río Claro, where it starts, and follows Pulperia and Rere to round out the loop.
Saturday is the longest day of the rally with 86.5 stage miles situated closer to the Pacific Ocean. Another loop of three stages to be repeated after service includes the Pelun and Lota stages, which both combine sections run in 2023 with parts that have never featured in the WRC previously. They are followed by Maria las Cruces, which remains from last year as the longest test of the rally at 17.6 miles.
While the final day of 2023’s route was staged just to the east of Concepción, for this year there’s a return to the same area visited on Saturday. A pair of stages will be run twice without mid-day service. The first, Laraquete, revisits the El Pinar test of 2019, but the Bio Bio powerstage bears no resemblance to that of five years ago; instead, the start and finish reuse parts of Maria las Cruces and Lota from Saturday’s itinerary.
