FIA Rally Working Group: the future of WRC and the rally sport

[WRCStan]

The part about WEC was more important, so I'll repeat it to you: LMGT3 class is only for customer teams, in Hypercar class most of the cars are run by private teams with manufacturer's support, similarly to most of WRC2's works teams.

Entries in either class must be at least approved by manufacturers who must also register and pay the FIA. 8/12 hypercar teams have title manufacturer support. LMGT3 is a trophy piggybacking on hypercar. Maybe the gentlemen drivers subsidise the manufacturers and vice-versa.

What important point am I missing? I know very little about WEC but as far as I can see this championship isn't running without manufacturer involvement and support.

[macebig]

Think it's important to note that LMDh is essentially a single make from private developers like Oreca, Ligier, Dallara and Michelotto with nearly spec chassis and a spec Hybrid unit.

[Kenneth]

What important point am I missing? I know very little about WEC but as far as I can see this championship isn't running without manufacturer involvement and support.

The point is that WRC can easily work as customer teams based series, if it's possible in much much more expensive WEC.

[Kenneth]

Think it's important to note that LMDh is essentially a single make from private developers like Oreca, Ligier, Dallara and Michelotto with nearly spec chassis and a spec Hybrid unit.

No Oreca, Ligier, Dallara and Multimatic (not Michelotto) are chassis suppliers. The rest of the car is up to the manufacturers. But they can also make LMH car with their own chassis and own hybrid system.

[seb_sh]

I think we're getting lost in the details. There are many models that work for various series. A common element of the succesfull ones that I see is a form of spending limit, either directly (F1 cost cap) or indirectly (performance capped by BOP so you avoid a spending war for diminishing returns).GT3 was created in the late 2000's by Stephane Ratel using the lessons learned from the FIA GT. He wanted to avoid the spending war that killed the initial GT1 (nobody except Mercedes wanted to continue in 1999) and also make it useless to build "homologation specials" like many manufacturers did at that time. He also banned full works teams and promoted amateur drivers by creating special categories and classifications for them. He recognised that having wealthy amateurs that can race in their own category can help the championship health. Now GT3 has gotten quite expensive for some but Ratel is again ahead of the game and a new GT2 regulation with cheaper and simpler cars (but slower than GT3) has been around for a while and is now gaining traction. So anyone who is priced out of GT3 can go to GT2. There is of course also GT4 as a natural step below. The point for this story is not to apply the same to WRC, but I'm tring to show that GT3 is so succesfull because somebody (in this case Ratel) had a proper long term vision and learned lessons in the past. GT3 is now wildy succesfull and has been for more than a decade, both in high profile international series and lower profile national races.

So my point is that WRC first needs some kind of high level vision of what it should be, not only for the WRC but also the levels below. Then starting from that concept you can decide the details like rally format and technical rules. Unfortunately to me it seems that the WRC has usually been a day late and a dollar short, having to react to something and take some short term decisions with no clear future. WRC was the last major series to add a hybrid and has no clue about hydrogen, meanwhile in the WEC/Le Mans they are preparing a hydrogen class since a few years ago with active discussion with the manufacturers, but I think that's more coming from the ACO (organisers of Le Mans) than FIA. Regarding the WRC the FIA has been asleep as usual.

Now beside the format or cars there is actually another critical issue for the WRC and that is it's "story". Whenever I talked to my friends about WRC in the past 15 years it's usually: Oh that.. well Loeb/Ogier always wins, it's boring. Now it's very difficult to make rules to create a true rivalry because the best will always be the best, however what you can do is create conditions so that there are more challengers coming up. F1 is now also starting to have this problem with Verstappen and viewers are dropping. I think drive to survive helped sure, but the battle between Verstappen and Hamilton was also a big draw. It was a classic old multiple times champion vs young gun, a young pretender dueling with the old king if you will. In WRC the kings die of boredom and the young pretenders are scrapping to get a WRC2 program together to compete in some rallies where maybe they are not even directly competing with the other title contenders. If WRC wants to attract more people it needs a better story.

So to conclude, in my opinion there really first needs to be some fundamental things decided before you go into details. The important thing is to capture the essence of rally and preserve that and then find a format and presentation that works for a larger audience. The danger is that they do the opposite and keep the surface things but change the core - in that case they will lose both the die hard fans and fail to gain new ones.

[becher]

Think it's important to note that LMDh is essentially a single make from private developers like Oreca, Ligier, Dallara and Michelotto with nearly spec chassis and a spec Hybrid unit.

*Multimatic

Michelotto is doing the Isotta Fraschini Hypercar with a Mercedes engine and WAE hybrid system.

[denkimi]

More power = more spectacular rallies = more spectators = More cost = less manufactures = less competition = boring rallies = rallying in trouble.

Cars with more power than Rally1 is the last thing we need as the cars are far too expensive as it is and in motorsport you can generally draw a straight line from increased power to increased cost.

As i said before, manufacturers coming has nothing to do with the cost but everything with the cost/profit ratio. If there are more spectators, the profit of being there becomes bigger and thus the cost can also be bigger.
If wrc would attract half a billion viewers as f1 does, manufacturers would happy to spend 200 or 300 million dollars to compete instead of the 100 million or so they do today.

+ power has no relation to cost. You can buy a new 650hp camaro engine for about 10k. It's the rules to limit the power output that make the engines so expensive.

[becher]

The part about WEC was more important, so I'll repeat it to you: LMGT3 class is only for customer teams, in Hypercar class most of the cars are run by private teams with manufacturer's support, similarly to most of WRC2's works teams.

Ahm no, Hypercar had four privateers last season, two of which were constructors and therefore don't fit the classic privateer scheme. The manufacturers do employ independent motorsport operations (be it pure teams or engineering companys) to run and/or develop the cars though. It's like basically any WRC manufacturer team between the mid 90s and 2013 bar the french and Skoda and none of these were considered privateers.

[seb_sh]

+ power has no relation to cost. You can buy a new 650hp camaro engine for about 10k. It's the rules to limit the power output that make the engines so expensive.

This is a good point of why it makes sense to use BOP for some things. Technologically we can now build very powerfull engines so the rules are made with restrictions in place to limit power. Manufacturers will then spend a lot of money for very small gains. Sure BOP is artificial but is strangling the engine with restrictors and arbitrary limits more natural? Is it really worth it? What if the rules were like this: engine size and cilinders are free, the FIA homologates the engine and puts it on the dyno and it has to be max 400hp and whatever torque but you can only use max 2 engines per season and if you take extra you lose 10 points each time you use an extra engine. That way there is still an engineering challenge, it goes in the direction of sustainability and you have some freedom to make some cool sounding cars. Maybe this would also make it more accessible for privateers and MSport could sell a few more cars. Just an example of how it could go.

[becher]

The point is that WRC can easily work as customer teams based series, if it's possible in much much more expensive WEC.

Touring cars tried that and died a quick and miserable death (also nearly killed the TCR scene in general as a result). Sportscars is a very different market place, but even there it wasn't a long term solution to have a predominantly privateer top class, even though it is of vital importance to sportscar racing that you offer a place (mostly in the lower categorys) for privateers, which are mostly funded by rich amateurs (something rallying is lacking).