The ferocity of the backlash has simmered, but there’s little denying the new points system introduced for the 2024 World Rally Championship season has been divisive at best.
If there are voices clearly in favor of it, they’ve certainly been quieter than those against.
But regardless, the upshot is the way to win a championship has shifted this season with points now awarded based on the rally classification after Saturday’s leg, with Sunday’s stages offering points to the seven fastest drivers across them as well as the usual bonus points for the top-five times on the end-of-rally powerstage.
Heading into the season’s final third, Thierry Neuville and Hyundai lead the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championship respectively, but had the points system not been altered the situation would not be the same in one of those title races.
While it is not an exact science to look at 2024’s results and apply the old points structure – because drivers approach events differently this year with the new points system – it is interesting to examine who has been hurt by this change and who has benefited.
These are the winners and losers of the 2024 points system so far:
Winner: Thierry Neuville
What’s interesting is Thierry Neuville’s points total would actually be significantly smaller by applying the 2023 points metric – 146 instead of 168.
But equally, his championship lead would also be nine-times smaller, at just three points instead of 27.
Unquestionably, that makes the Belgian a ‘winner’ from this revised points system.
No driver has scored more Super Sunday points than Neuville this season, who has greatly adapted to the new way to rake in points. That rally win and Super Sunday domination on the Monte was a super way to start and the Hyundai star is yet to dwindle.
Either way, Neuville has clearly been the top performer this season as he’d be leading the way with four rounds to go regardless of any points system change.
Loser: Elfyn Evans
Elfyn Evans’ championship campaign is looking a lot more sorry for itself after that non-score in Finland, but what’s also counted against the Welshman is his poorer Sunday return than his two full-time rivals.
Neuville has managed 77 points on Sundays with Ott Tänak close behind on 70. Evans has only registered 46 – or to put it in more damning terms, 59.7% of Neuville’s total.
Concentrate on what each driver has scored from Saturday’s rally position and Evans has a far more competitive 94.5% of Neuville’s tally.
The 2024 points system punishes consistency and rewards pace, and over the spread of the season Evans hasn’t quite had enough of the latter to really make it count. That’s never ideal in a world championship fight, but essentially Evans’ greatest strength has been neutered by the points redesign.
Loser: Sébastien Ogier
The part-time argument certainly holds, in that Sébastien Ogier has often benefited from a superior road position to those who actually made it their pre-season intention to fight for the championship.
But peer at the stats and the Toyota driver’s season has been absolutely extraordinary. Six starts: three wins, three second places.
Even though he’s missed three rallies, nobody has scored more points than Ogier on Saturdays (97 to Neuville’s 91) but the picture flips on Sunday with Ogier 33 down on Neuville – which explains his current deficit.
Applying the 2023 points system to the 2024 results leaves Ogier a tantalizing three points shy of Neuville, but if he is seriously going to claim the most unlikely of titles he’ll need to keep upping his game on Sundays.
Winner: Hyundai
The biggest beneficiary of the new points system however is Hyundai, which instead of leading Toyota by 20 points would actually be 41 points in arrears had the system not changed.
That’s a massive 61-point swing that Hyundai has fully earned by being far more effective at perfecting the strategy and continually getting the job done on Sundays.
Hyundai has only won three rallies to Toyota’s six in 2024, but only twice has Toyota beaten it to the Super Sunday leg win. The effect that’s had on the championship table is obvious.
Whether you feel it’s fair is essentially irrelevant. These are the rules, and so far Hyundai has been much better at playing to them.
Loser: Toyota
There’s not too much more to add here given the above entry, but Toyota simply has to be registered as a ‘loser’ given in any other championship season it would be leading the manufacturers’ standings.
To its credit it has begun to wake up to the importance of Sundays after initially not quite getting to grips with it, but Hyundai’s firepower has remained strong. Esapekka Lappi beating Takamoto Katsuta to Sunday’s top seven points in Finland, despite Katsuta posting the same overall time to a tenth of a second, was a metaphor for how it’s been so far.
Loser: Esapekka Lappi
Not everybody from the Hyundai camp can be considered a ‘winner’ though.
In terms of raw points scoring not much has changed for Esapekka Lappi with the new system in place, and his points return is fairly irrelevant given he is not competing for the drivers’ title.
But Lappi became the first driver in WRC history to not score the most points from a championship round despite winning it in Sweden, and for that he simply has to be noted as a ‘loser’ here.
Winner: Ott Tänak
Although his team-mate Neuville has accumulated more points from Sundays than Tänak has, no other driver has relied on Sunday’s boosted offering more than the 2019 world champion.
Incredibly, over half of Tänak’s 2024 points have been earned from Super Sunday – owing to a topsy-turvy campaign with far more mistakes than he’d have liked.
But with this new system in place, more points can be rescued than ever before and Tänak has proved a master at that. He’s won Sunday’s leg four times already this year and the only Sunday he’s scored poorly on was Finland – and that’s because he didn’t start it.
He and Neuville in particular have been the masters of maximizing what’s newly available this year, which goes a long way to explaining why a season in which Toyota has on paper again dominated is actually going better for the boys and girls in orange and blue.
Actual 2024 points vs 2024 with 2023 points system applied:
| Pos | +/- | Driver | 2024 pts | 2023 pts |
| 1 | Thierry Neuville | 168 | 146 | |
| 2 | Sébastien Ogier | 141 | 143 | |
| 3 | ↓ 1 | Ott Tänak | 137 | 114 |
| 4 | ↑ 1 | Elfyn Evans | 132 | 123 |
| 5 | Adrien Fourmaux | 119 | 105 | |
| 6 | Kalle Rovanperä | 86 | 88 | |
| 7 | Takamoto Katsuta | 76 | 62 | |
| 8 | ↓ 1 | Esapekka Lappi | 33 | 31 |
| 9 | ↑ 1 | Andreas Mikkelsen | 29 | 32 |
| 10 | ↓ 1 | Dani Sordo | 27 | 25 |
| 11 | ↑ 1 | Sami Pajari | 26 | 31 |
Top Saturday scorers:
| Position | Driver | Points |
| 1 | Sébastien Ogier | 97 |
| 2 | Thierry Neuville | 91 |
| 3 | Elfyn Evans | 86 |
| 4 | Adrien Fourmaux | 83 |
| 5 | Ott Tänak | 61 |
Top Sunday scorers:
| Position | Driver | Points |
| 1 | Thierry Neuville | 77 |
| 2 | Ott Tänak | 70 |
| 3 | Elfyn Evans | 46 |
| 4 | Sébastien Ogier | 44 |
| 5 | Adrien Fourmaux | 36 |
