WRC main class in 2025

[Sulland]

One more GR Toyota is coming in a Corolla.
https://www.toyota.com/grcorolla/

[Andre Oliveira]

R5s have always sounded pretty boring. When s2000 started becoming the new group N in the late noughties, the sport exploded. IRC grew and grew, and I'd say overtook the WRC. The cars obviously had slighty better performance than group N subarus and mitsubishis, but when you stood in a forest there was a world of difference.

The 17 cars and now the rally1s have the pure spectacle, can hear them from miles away and also have the speed. R5s don't have the spectacle to be the top class without big tweaks. S2000s would've done back in the early 2010s, and that was reflected by how strong the IRC was and how many fans watched / attended.

Totally agree. Say that Rally2 can replace is bullshit. And the official team would be allways better than privateers after 2/3 rounds. People dream a lot with something that can’t happen. We need more manufacters in top class, not cut the class.

[skarderud]

Well girls, if you have the direct comparison between Rally1 and Rally2, ofcourse Rally2 is more "boring" to watch.
But when you have 25 Rally2's drived in anger there 15 of those fighting for a top5 spot, and 8 of them can win, thats not boring.

You sound like those dudes that should quit when they banned Gr.B, Gr.A was boring.
It didn't tok long time before Gr.A was a spectacle with a high interrested fans and media. And some occasional local hero stiring things up.
With a Rally2 based championship, eventually with adjustments to a "+" version that everyone can buy, we would have a much better championship from a sporting point of wiew.

We have guys like Serderidis in a Rally1 car, possible to take points, but the last years wrc2 champs is not even close to have a seat without paying enormous amount of money, if they even can get a deal, thats enough argument for me. This Rally1 thing is a joke and a ruining the sport.

Its a recessecion coming, its just a matter of time before Hyundai pull the plug, no new manus are interessted.
Manus get exactly the same exposure with a cheaper car, its no point to do this.
Sadly FIA are equal stupid to FIFA.

Sent fra min SM-S901B via Tapatalk

[manthey]

As R5+ category I remember RRC cars as "small wrc".
For sure more battle would be interesting (take a look at wrc sanremo 2001 entry list

https://www.ewrc-results.com/entries...-ditalia-2001/


and Rally2 are not so slow relative to Rally1

[atsiotras79]

Well girls, if you have the direct comparison between Rally1 and Rally2, ofcourse Rally2 is more "boring" to watch.
But when you have 25 Rally2's drived in anger there 15 of those fighting for a top5 spot, and 8 of them can win, thats not boring.

You sound like those dudes that should quit when they banned Gr.B, Gr.A was boring.
It didn't tok long time before Gr.A was a spectacle with a high interrested fans and media. And some occasional local hero stiring things up.
With a Rally2 based championship, eventually with adjustments to a "+" version that everyone can buy, we would have a much better championship from a sporting point of wiew.

We have guys like Serderidis in a Rally1 car, possible to take points, but the last years wrc2 champs is not even close to have a seat without paying enormous amount of money, if they even can get a deal, thats enough argument for me. This Rally1 thing is a joke and a ruining the sport.

Its a recessecion coming, its just a matter of time before Hyundai pull the plug, no new manus are interessted.
Manus get exactly the same exposure with a cheaper car, its no point to do this.
Sadly FIA are equal stupid to FIFA.

Sent fra min SM-S901B via Tapatalk

Put a restriction to organisers about not using tight and slow uphill parts and then even with Rally5 cars the top drivers will make the spectacle to be ok 😂

[AnttiL]

Remove Hybrid, it is a dead end. No production cars have this, so no gain.

Most production cars don't have 4WD, 300 BHP or rear wings either.

[AnttiL]

R5s have always sounded pretty boring. When s2000 started becoming the new group N in the late noughties, the sport exploded. IRC grew and grew, and I'd say overtook the WRC. The cars obviously had slighty better performance than group N subarus and mitsubishis, but when you stood in a forest there was a world of difference.

The 17 cars and now the rally1s have the pure spectacle, can hear them from miles away and also have the speed. R5s don't have the spectacle to be the top class without big tweaks. S2000s would've done back in the early 2010s, and that was reflected by how strong the IRC was and how many fans watched / attended.

I assume sound made the S2000 car appear faster than it actually is. I never witnessed the S2000 era live and I don't find these cars that exciting.

Meanwhile, Rally2 cars are a lot faster than S2000 and basically we could say that they are faster than Group B monsters on rally stages, but they sound quite tame.

[AnttiL]

Well girls, if you have the direct comparison between Rally1 and Rally2, ofcourse Rally2 is more "boring" to watch.
But when you have 25 Rally2's drived in anger there 15 of those fighting for a top5 spot, and 8 of them can win, thats not boring.

I don't see this problem. Even with Rally1 we see the same Rally2 cars driven in anger. It's good to have different classes of cars for each having their own class winner instead of half of the cars being one class. And there will always be gentlemen drivers and privateers who must be careful not to crash.

You sound like those dudes that should quit when they banned Gr.B, Gr.A was boring.
It didn't tok long time before Gr.A was a spectacle with a high interrested fans and media. And some occasional local hero stiring things up.

The rules were a bit more free and teams/manufacturers had more budget to develop the cars.

With a Rally2 based championship, eventually with adjustments to a "+" version that everyone can buy, we would have a much better championship from a sporting point of wiew.

Rally2 car is not something "everyone" can buy. And especially with adjustments and factory team development it would become more expensive.

We have guys like Serderidis in a Rally1 car, possible to take points, but the last years wrc2 champs is not even close to have a seat without paying enormous amount of money, if they even can get a deal, thats enough argument for me. This Rally1 thing is a joke and a ruining the sport.

Motorsport has always been a sport that's not based on results but budget as well. We've seen numerous talents get sidelined throughout the years, it's not the first time it happens.

[AnttiL]

As R5+ category I remember RRC cars as "small wrc".

RRC was a WRC car that you made deliberately slower. It didn't make it less expensive.

For sure more battle would be interesting (take a look at wrc sanremo 2001 entry list

https://www.ewrc-results.com/entries...-ditalia-2001/

Those cars were still very expensive, and times were different globally. It's not just about the class of cars.

We can also look at this entry list of RAC 1986 and say Group B is the answer to our problems because there were 43 top class cars (well some of them just put in that class for missing group A homologation, but still a lot of real Group B cars)

https://www.ewrc-results.com/entries...ac-rally-1986/

[AnttiL]

Point isnt hybrid boost in roadlegal cars? Hybrid is just one way to somehow use WRC as marketing. Manus were using WRC to sell their brand and their road version cars of those rallycars Imbreza STI, Evo, Focus RS etc. Today there isnt models to sell with the help of WRC and it gets just more and more pointless to throw manus money. Only one Yaris GR, but that came to life more like thanks to WRC. And as many car manus have hybrid in their lineup, its only logical to try to use hybrid in WRC to somehow use WRC in marketing and to maybe atract new manus to it.

Rallying has never been about selling the "homologation specials" like Impreza STI or Focus RS. The point has been to make the brand appear positive in the eyes of consumers who buy normal family cars. The classic example is Peugeot who were on verge of bankrupty but the 205 T16 project made them rise and 205 was voted the car of the year. The company wasn't saved by selling those 200 road going T16 models.