When you’re looking to purchase a new car for the street, the phrase you long to read is: ‘never raced or rallied’.
Never, however, will you read ‘never raced and rallied’.
Only this year, you might. Because for the first time ever, a rally car can be raced and a race car can be rallied at the top level of two FIA motorsport disciplines.
Welcome to a brand-new era for rallycross.
Rally cars are the most versatile competition vehicles on the planet. Complete with registration, tax and even blinkers, they are fully road legal machines that transport competitors from the service park to the stages.
But now you can rally a Rally4 car one weekend – the most competitive front-wheel-drive rally car that’s currently FIA homologated – and race it in the FIA European Rallycross Championship the next.
The one competition vehicle now serves two purposes for minimal extra cost.
An existing Rally4 rally car now has two purposes: to rally and to race
“Last year I started [with the FIA] in rallycross and picked up a challenging product,” explains James Nixon, rallycross sporting manager at the FIA.
“We had to get our thinking hats on pretty quickly about how to drive this sport forward again, knowing that it really has a place in the market. I’ve been in rallycross in different championships for a few years, and you always see that there is a struggle there just because, as you said, a rally car is so diverse. You can use it in so many places with very small adaptations.
“In rallycross, it’s been a very specific car for generally just that short circuit that has high power from the launch and that car couldn’t be used on a rally very well let’s say. So now the thinking is, for all of rallycross in actually all of the categories, that we can start to move towards a more rally-derived vehicle.”
And so RX4 was born.
Designed to “test the water” for the future – with the top-class rallycross car in 2028 being based on the new Rally1 rally car for 2027 – only light modifications are needed to change a Rally4 car from the stages to an RX4 car for the track.
Elements that aren’t required for rallycross are removed – such as the co-drivers’ seat, the lights and the spare wheel – and some elements added, including the option to add polycarbonate instead of glass for the windows and an increased minimum weight (with rallycross rules weighing the car with the driver inside).
Otherwise the cars are identical, even down to the rims and tires.
RX4 fits in towards the bottom of the FIA's revised rallycross pyramid
“It’s something we wanted to make as easy as possible,” says Matteo Romano, FIA’s technical expert – off road championships. “So if you have a Rally4 car, just follow the regulation of the Rally4 [for the RX4 car].
“If your car is already following the technical regulation of the Rally4, you can come to RX4, just remove some stuff, as I told you before, and that’s it. Job done.”
The vision is to align rallying closer with rallycross, tempt fresh talent to rallycross by lowering the barrier of entry and create a genuine second-hand market for lower-cost cars in rallycross.
“And the good thing is, starting with RX4, with the Rally4 car, there’s many cars out there,” Nixon adds.
“Everything should be as simple as an arrive-and-drive can be from one sport to another. So yeah, you can of course have that crossover [of drivers doing both rallying and rallycross], which would be fantastic and almost groundbreaking if we can do it.”
The plan is in place, now all it needs is competitor buy-in.
RX3 is considerably more expensive than RX4, but will RX4 grids fill like the FIA hopes?
“We set ourselves a goal to have 10 cars in the first season, just so you have two complete heats in the championship,” says Nixon.
“I think we could have some good teams in there that are already running in other categories. And that aligns with trying to find this rallycross talent again, where existing rallycross teams are thinking, ‘OK, we can bring drivers in at the bottom of the ladder and start to work them up’.”
Romano adds: “We did a test in Finland and got good feedback. Because it was during an actual race of the championship, people of the sport were there and all of them liked the idea.
“Tommi Hallman drove the car and said it’s super easy to drive in those conditions and you can really reach the limit quickly. So if you are able to reach the limit of the car, for sure the battle on the track is going to be super exciting and it’s going to be a very nice race to see.
“The excitement for the fans will be there, I’m 100% sure of that.”
On paper, there are no losers. Now the track, as well as the stages, will dictate who the winners are.
