At first it was Citroën that dominated. Suzuki and Renault then got in on the act before Citroën muscled its way back to the front again.
But save for a few years in the middle, the 2010s and so far the ’20s have all been about Ford.
The Blue Oval’s current streak of consecutive Junior World Rally Championships is six, and that’s guaranteed to stretch to seven this year given the entire field is driving Fiestas.
However it’s not a record you’ll hear the marketing team shout about, as JWRC is now a one-make formula. It has been since 2011. Which is why Fords have swept the board ever since, apart from 2014-16 when Citroën held the tender.
From 2001 when a certain Sébastien Loeb became the first ever Junior world champion through to 2010, any FIA homologated Super 1600 car was eligible.
Why’s any of this relevant?
Mainly because M-Sport Poland’s Ford Fiesta Rally3, the current car used in JWRC, is about to have a rival for the first time with the Renault Clio Rally3 closing in on homologation.
And while Renault isn’t interested in running JWRC – in fact it’s not even going to be running a factory program for the Clio at all – DirtFish understands there might be interest in JWRC if it was opened up to multiple makes again.
So should JWRC be opened up for more cars again, or is it all about drivers proving themselves in the same car?
The perfect person to turn to right now is M-Sport Poland’s managing director and JWRC championship manager Maciej Woda. So we shall.
“It depends what you want to achieve,” Woda told DirtFish.
“If you want to have very strong competition between the cars and you are not worried about the price – open it to all the manufacturers, open to everybody.
“If you want to control the price and if you want to find the fastest driver, for me the single supplier and single maintenance, the way we are doing it now, is the way forward.”
That may sound like a line of self interest from Woda, but it’s not.
“Whether it’s with us, whether it’s with someone else, for me this is the way forward,” he continued. “So it all depends on what you want.
“You open it to all the manufacturers and you will have a team, let’s name it Renault for example, that will want to prove that they are the fastest – the budget will double, easily.
“And we’ve seen it in S2000 days where budget for doing S2000 at the top level was crazy high and you couldn’t just come and compete with your small team.
“So I think that’s what’s going to happen if this would be open to all the manufacturers. And then you have another thing if you open it to all the manufacturers that is fine, but who is providing the prize?
“Please bear in mind that we are providing the prize for the winner which is another step in the career.
“If there is a budget for the prize and, like I said, if we are not mindful of the cost to all the drivers then yeah we should open it to all the manufacturers, for sure it would be a cracking championship.”
It’s a tough one. Heart says open it up, head says keep it as it is.
The stars of this year’s JWRC are back in action in Croatia this week.
