The future of rallying.......?

[blackmar]

What would be the rallysport in 2008 and further?
Bad news with the OMV withdrawn, and I'm sure they are not the only one.It's bad that all the cars went too much expensive again with the new S2000 class. More development = more money. Too much different classes / cars. S2000, gr.N, S1600, R3, WRC..... Why there was the release of the R3 cars when there is no such class yet? Does anybody knows when FIA will make the R classes official? I heard that in 2009 - maybe! The S2000 cars are pretty much expensive in comparison to gr.N. There are too many gr.N cars on the market that soon will cost nothing and to be competitive you must buy a S2000 car. In one moment the gr.N was a good option but again there are changes. And I see the battle between the french/italian companies agaist the japanese (with the support of FIA). Now with the S2000 they want to stop Subaru and Mitsubishi and get their clients. With the S2000 FIA completely gave a green light to FIAT/Peugeot in the battle for the european teams and the new IRC challange.

[Sulland]

http://www.worldrallyblog.com/2017/0...g-term-answer/

Is this still being debated in the industry, teams and in FIA?

[Jarek Z]

http://www.worldrallyblog.com/2017/0...g-term-answer/

Is this still being debated in the industry, teams and in FIA?

It's an interesting point of view, but I'm afraid that the author of this article is painting a rosy picture of the situation in R5 class.
Firstly, he says that there are currently 6 manufacturers in this class, but is it true? I only know Citroen, Ford, Hyundai, Skoda and Peugeot. And even out of those 5 manufacurers, only 2 are winning cars - Ford Fiesta and Skoda Fabia. Citroen, Hyundai and Peugeot are far behind when it comes to competition on an international level.
Secondly, the author says that the 2018 season will have 8 different manufacturers - Citroen, Ford, Hyundai, Skoda, Peugeot, Opel, VW, Proton - featured in the R5 class. But is it really so? VW and Proton don't exist and Opel doesn't even want to homologate an existing car.

Having said that I really hope that there is a bright future in front of the R5 class.

[EightGear]

A 10 year old topic, nice.....

[Mirek]

Hyundai isn't uncompetitive. It's just not that widespread. Just wait two weeks and it will likely win a big international event

[sete]

You probably mean rally Ypres with Neuville behind the wheel,but anything can happened on Ypres

[Watson]

I'm not in favour of R5s being the highest class either. I think they are nice to look at and they are great youth developpers and give an enourmous bang for the buck for lower tier events and championships. But for the biggest rallying circus in the world they don't really give me enough of a buzz. I even found the 1.6 litre turbo, non-active centre diff cars too dull.

The way the cars are now I find perfect. They look like monsters and are spectacular in motion, they sound amazing and you just know that this is as fast as it gets without being stupidly dangerous. They got me properly hooked with the WRC again.

[AnttiL]

[QUOTE=Watson;1142393

The way the cars are now I find perfect. They look like monsters and are spectacular in motion, they sound amazing and you just know that this is as fast as it gets without being stupidly dangerous. They got me properly hooked with the WRC again.[/QUOTE]
+1

But R5 is definitely the best support class ever.

[Mirek]

The current WRC cars are roughly 3-4x more expensive to run than R5. If they make R5 the top category it won't make WRC 3-4x cheaper but the R5 at least 2x more expensive. I prefer to keep them what they are. And when I say to keep I mean to keep like they are now. Not to enlarge restrictor or to add paddle shifting like they may do next year. It would only add cost which is totally unnecessary.

Anyway I think that previous decade has shown quite clearly that trying to make top tier cheap is nonsense. It never worked and it never will.

[Watson]

+1

But R5 is definitely the best support class ever.

Yeah definitely as a support class they are superb. Also, when you go and watch a more local rally there are more things to look at now than just Evos and Imprezas, which is nice.