WRC future

[Mirek]

the steps forward are different.

during the group b era, teams would put their money on making more powerful engines or bigger aero, since there were big improvements to find there.
that created very powerful but difficult to handle cars.

No, that's not true. They made every changes which they saw as a step forward for having better stage times. Whatever they found to be an advantage (and allowed) they used. There were huge steps towards better handing such as placing the engine in-front of the rear axle as well. Audi insisting for long time on having the longitudinal I5 engine in-front of the front axle was a result of marketing decision going against the technical arguments. The tyre and suspension development was not sleeping either.

nowadays with much technical limits, gains are very small so teams put much money in creating cars with better drivability. there are no big inventions anymore, they will never find something that will give them 50 extra hp anymore, all cars are almost identical. so they go and test 50 different kinds of shocks to see which one will give them a 0,1% advantage.

That comes from the limits of the rules. When You limit the areas for the development all focus concentrates on them. That's normal.

and racing has never had much to do with the current technology. you don't see water injection, anti-lag, water cooled brakes, inverted shocks, sequential gearboxes, lsd, spoilers, ... on ordinary cars.

The racing used to be all about the current technology until the breaking point being possibly the late gr.B crisis. You can't mix the level of technology with stuff being used in stock automotive production. That is two different things.

it's all about marketing. the racing car has to have the logo, and preferably some looks in common with the car people can buy at their dealer. nothing more

That is true but it wasn't always like that.

[denkimi]

No, that's not true. They made every changes which they saw as a step forward for having better stage times. Whatever they found to be an advantage (and allowed) they used. There were huge steps towards better handing such as placing the engine in-front of the rear axle as well. Audi insisting for long time on having the longitudinal I5 engine in-front of the front axle was a result of marketing decision going against the technical arguments. The tyre and suspension development was not sleeping either.

It is certainly true.

Say you have one million dollar to develop the car. You could build a new revolutionary engine that will make your car 1s/km faster, or you could further develop shocks that will give you a 0,1s advantage. What do you think they would choose?

Group b was a time of revolution, not of evolution. Nobody cared about perfecting the existing technology if by the next year it was already obsolete. Instead of perfecting handling and winning a little time, they just put a bigger turbo on it and won a lot of time.
Sure, everything else also improved, but the revolutions made the cars suddenly so much faster that evolution could't keep up.

So what you had where always new, very fast, but very imperfect cars.

Nowadays there are no more revolutions possible, so teams put their effort in small changes. They perfect the cars, trying to make driving as easy as possible.

[Mirek]

It is certainly true.

Say you have one million dollar to develop the car. You could build a new revolutionary engine that will make your car 1s/km faster, or you could further develop shocks that will give you a 0,1s advantage. What do you think they would choose?

Group b was a time of revolution, not of evolution. Nobody cared about perfecting the existing technology if by the next year it was already obsolete. Instead of perfecting handling and winning a little time, they just put a bigger turbo on it and won a lot of time.
Sure, everything else also improved, but the revolutions made the cars suddenly so much faster that evolution could't keep up.

So what you had where always new, very fast, but very imperfect cars.

Nowadays there are no more revolutions possible, so teams put their effort in small changes. They perfect the cars, trying to make driving as easy as possible.

No, it's not true. This "power over everything" idea is represented mainly by the Audi approach but that didn't come from the engineers thinking that more power and more aero is a cure for everything. They knew very well that the handling of the car was shitty and that the main reason was the wrong engine location and orientation but the company management insisted on it for marketing reasons. In the same time Audi engineers were secretly working on their own "engineering solution" with smaller mid-engine car but that never made it behind the prototype phase due to the historical events.

But Audi was not alone. Lancia long time stayed with a nimble small and light RWD. Peugeot introduced a mid-engine lightweight and small car which was much less powerful than the Audi yet it was faster. Ford came with a concept with switchable 4WD/RWD to improve handling on different surfaces etc. They were well aware that the power was not everything even though it definitely played far bigger role than in the restrictor era which was about to come later.

[mknight]

I find it funny that you are complaining how WRC is not the "best and latest tech" without limits when by own admission it hasn't been the case for the last 33 years!! (in rallying) For Formula 1 it's at least 26 years or more as well. (if you count active aero and turbo engines it's longer)

Even with the limits it's quite certain that the 2022 cars will be faster than 2011-2016 cars and likely not much slower than 2017-2021.

[Rally Power]

Using improved R5 engines and transmissions (getting rid of WRC purposed built engines and active diffs) seem reasonable ways to achieve costs reduction but to limit suspension tech is probably a bit too much; suspension development has been a major contribution for car handling and safety improvements.

Btw, it remains to see if spaceframe will become mandatory (hope not) and how much the hybrid system will finally cost (it’d be ridiculous making it cost half of the car price…).

Don't worry, they'll come up with something new again in like 10 years.

Make it 5…
The previous WRC generation only last 6 years and the current one will last 5 (unless the FIA keeps delaying the regs…). Only Gr.B had a shorter life (4 full years, as ’82 was a development season with most of the manus still using Gr.2/4 cars).

[Mirek]

I find it funny that you are complaining how WRC is not the "best and latest tech" without limits when by own admission it hasn't been the case for the last 33 years!! (in rallying) For Formula 1 it's at least 26 years or more as well. (if you count active aero and turbo engines it's longer)

Even with the limits it's quite certain that the 2022 cars will be faster than 2011-2016 cars and likely not much slower than 2017-2021.

I am not complaining. I wrote clearly already in the first post that I didn't see it as a wrong thing to use the old-stylish tech. I only wrote that I found it funny.

The subsequent rhetorical discussion is a bit pointless in relation to the new cars, I agree with that, however I didn't want to leave the questions to my statements unanswered.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

It's like in F1 - for years they kept changing the Regs to slow the cars down and within a year they were faster than ever.

2022 WRC cars with hybrid but other limits will probably soon be as fast or faster then the '17-spec cars.

[er88]

Real shame if the next generation of cars arent as spectacular. Hopefully they will be in terms of speed and noise, because it's what gets fans to the stages

[AnttiL]

https://www.rallit.fi/wrc-tallipomo-...mita-tapahtuu/

Millener is concerned about the effects that corona virus has on the world economy. It could lead into car manufacturers having to cut their budgets and lead into less money being available for developing the new cars and postponing the 2022 rules.

[Mirek]

That is certainly possible.