If, if... The EU won't require all new cars to be EVs. It's quite clear that it's not happening and sustainable fuel or ICE hydrogen will be option too.
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If, if... The EU won't require all new cars to be EVs. It's quite clear that it's not happening and sustainable fuel or ICE hydrogen will be option too.
In fact WRC / rallying in general have been runn ing BEHIND the latest tech for years. Hybrid is a perfect example... Toyota had this 25 years ago !!Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyRAC
Clutchless / equential gear changing is about the last thing I can think of that was rally-pioneered before appearing on road cars.
And the other issue is people mainly prefer tech for inside the car like infotainment, not for driving pleasure.
Yes since 2000 rally has always been behind the "trend".
First it was running 2L turbo when no mainstream petrol cars had turbo.
Then it added 2L atmo (S2000) just as downsizing trend with 1.6l turbos started.
When WRC catched up to downsizing mainstream started turning to hybrids. (see VW and Citroen comments in 2018-2020)
Now that hybrids came the trend was to EVs already.
Hard to say if there is a new "trend" yet, but if there is rallying will be late again.
Imo the main reason is that the manus that are already in the championship are always favored over potential new entries. The existing teams always want to keep as much as possible from before to keep their advantage over new arrivals.
Which such series?Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyRAC
Motorsport has moved on from being consumer production tech relevant, just so long as the branding is right.
Technologically, the WRC has a really big problem. The obsessive focus on reducing costs has hit a dead end; there's nothing left to trim. At the same time, just because Rally1 are quick, we're meant to believe that these 5-speed, hybrid converted aero cars with barely any testing and development time during the year are the pinnacle of rallying.
The jump to 2017 regulations was a big success in the short term because suddenly the tech opened up again, the cars became more sophisticated and that created value. Promoter should focus on that: creating value for the series, not bring costs down to a level matching the series' current status.
Cars are 3x more expensive than the WRC 2.0L and probably 6x or 7x more than the Group A era. What part of that is "reducing costs"?
Except they are not.Quote:
Originally Posted by macebig
So, the F1 car costs 15mio, the Hypercar 2mio, and the MotoGP bike the same, and the whole world is bothered that those WRC cars are too expensive (1mio) while they're practically the cheapest on the world level. And still getting the most beating out of all.
But WRC has the fewest entries and only 2.5 Manufacturer Teams.Quote:
Originally Posted by deephouse
If costs were allowed to go even higher new Manufacturers would be put off and M-Sport would be out and the Series would be further diminished.
If there's no value in the championship, even 1 Euro is too much in business sense.
F1 and WEC were much more than that beforehand. Audi and Porsche had budgets of $150mil and in F1 Ferrari was about $300 mil in the mid 00s. Massive cost cuts since.
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
Eddie, you don't get new customers by offering them a discount on an old product. Business with rich customers doesn't work that way and the manufacturers are super rich ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by Franky
Anyway when Václav Pech bought a Focus WRC 01 its cost was about 700 thousand GBP if I remember right. The total inflation of GBP between 2001 and 2024 is 82%. That means that the sum equals to todays 1,274 million GBP or 1,49 million Euro. Moreover for him as Czech at that time the GBP was equal to 58,9 Czech crowns while today it is 29,4, i.e. exactly half!
More recent example. The R5/Rally2 prices were frozen in 2015. The Euro inflation between 2015 and today is 28%. That means that the Rally2 cars today are actually 22% cheaper than they were in 2015.
No, the cars are not multiple times more expensive than they were in the past.
Buying the car isn't the only cost. Running costs count also. You could literally swap a gearbox, an engine from a wrecked or road car into a Group A. Body parts were dirt cheap and very easy to find. Nowadays, body is all carbon and costs a fortune to repair. And better not go into engines or gearboxes.
The claim was that today's cars are 3x more expensive than older WRC and 6x more than Gr.A which is simply nonsense.Quote:
Originally Posted by macebig
Anyway Gr.A is nothing but a history. It's simply impossible today because the world and the car industry has changed. There is no point bringing it over and over again into the discussion about the future of our sport.
DAVID EVANS PONDERS WHETHER GROUP B SHOULD ACT AS INSPIRATION FOR WRC'S 2027 REGULATIONSQuote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/is-re...rc-generation/
That text is of really bad quality :(Quote:
Originally Posted by WRCStan
skoda motorsport maybe not so random projetc?
https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1471248274276620
...just sharing
Still needs to be changed from race to rally and if they do return, other than that I do hope it’s with a smaller model or at least one that doesn’t have that ugly ‘coupe’ sloping roof line look.Quote:
Originally Posted by saco0o
Hydrogen-powered Hyundai rally car now being driven by Hayden Paddon in NZ...
https://www.facebook.com/HyundaiNZ/v...40aB7S9Ucbxw6v
hydrogen electric from hyundai, ice hydrogen from toyota. its interesting if you think about tech development! really cool.
tho wrc needs to solve one thing:
if they choose these expensive solutions, (hybrids, evs, hydrogen) they need at least 5 manufaturers involved, because we know smaller teams and privateers will never have that kind of money. so they need more factory teams... OR we are going to have just 6 full time cars for years and years (IF none of the current treams quit) :/
They could open and have it all, and then all manufacturers have conditions to get involved. You know when thing is restricted, there is always one, which can't get involved, because they don't sell that shit, the WRC offer.
It is hilarious when people here argue about how much of a fire hazard batteries in EVs are and then suggest using pressurized hydrogen instead.
hehe true, tho at the same time, 99,9999% of both motorsport and 'road' incidents with fire in the whole history of "cars" were caused because of petrol, so...Quote:
Originally Posted by mknight
To me it seems that at WRC level most fires are caused by hot exhaust parts getting into contact with either vegetation or other parts of the car. So it is petrol, but indirectly.
There is a recent history of fires caused by fuel tank issue with Polo R5 and Fabia R5, but that issue seems more like an exception.
But like VHS vs Betamax, someone is going to lose and do so in a very public way.Quote:
Originally Posted by deephouse
Maybe WRC could use Rally2 cars, factory and private teams, for a few years, until the car industry decides what fuel is really going to be the future.
Why again? Just why?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
This idea is as dead as the Monty Python parrot.
Except it's not true. Hydrogen is pretty safe. With hydrogen in open spaces you vitrually can't ever get a vapor explosion or self ignition. The reason is that unlike gasoline, methan etc. it is far ligher than air and therefopre never concentrates in an open space. When it's leaking it just dissipates in the air and nothing happens. It also requires far richer (and virtually impossible in open space) concentration for self ignition than gasoline vapors. Plus unlike gasoline or battries it's not toxic.Quote:
Originally Posted by saco0o
Of course you can't shoot the pressurized tank but you can't do that with petrol tank or a battery either.
It's not dead, no manufacturers are coming, end of. The technical standards discussion is moot. Manufacturers want out, now the Promoter wants out. If the FIA end up promoting their own series again, this is what they'll do, as it's what they proposed earlier this year when they were unwittingly acting like the Turkey voting for Christmas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
Sure with a healthy championship I will say the same, it certainly isn't a target, but the championship is very, very sick.
Only thing I will say to Eddie is that the car industry isn't coming back, ever.
yesQuote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
Right then I guess this explosion never happened:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
https://www.fleeteurope.com/fr/new-e...fety-questions
(Link is first search hit, but it was everywhere in the news).
Afterwards they found out it was due to wrongly installed valve that leaked. (So no shooting of pressurized tank). In either case after this the number of hydrogen fylling stations around Oslo went from like 6 to 1 and hydrogen car sales dropped to close to zero, while battery car sales are now at 94% of all new cars.
Here we go again with the discussion that’s been here for thousand times…
ah, wait. i was talking more about the "against ev" people talking about cars getting on fire when literally 99% of cars (road or motorsport) ending up in fire are all petrol cars. EVs are relatively a new thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
and about Hydrogen, they will not be using Hydrogen in open space so its flamable like a fuel tank or the components of a battery, as far as I understand
I think Mirek's arguments get more hilarous with every iteration.Quote:
Originally Posted by EstWRC
Now we found out that all those Rockets cannot work. As Mark Watney puts it "nothing bad ever happened when mixing hydrogen with oxygen".
But volatile or not, you still need to ignite it, right? The reports of investigations into that Norway explosion do not explain what that ignition was. One article says "This [incorrectly installed] valve leaked hydrogen which caught fire when it came into contact with the air."Quote:
Originally Posted by mknight
If you study the video closely, you'll see that the car isn't powered directly by hydrogen - it's a conventional battery electric vehicle. The hydrogen fuel cell is used in the re-charging station that provides the power to re-charge the car battery.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC
The flammability range for a mixture of hydrogen in air is 4% to 75% by volume - one of the largest ranges of any flammable mixture.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
Details of how you ensure that the risk of a explosion from a release is minimised is covered in EN IEC 60079-10 Classification of areas - Explosive gas atmospheres.
If there's a hydrogen leak there will be a volume where the mixture of hydrogen and air is within the flammable range. If that volume coincides with a source of ignition then there will be an explosion. Note that hydrogen/air mixtures have one of the lowest ignition energies of any flammable mixture - 0.02 mJ. A hot surface or a spark with more energy than this could ignite the mixture. This is why the design rules for electical equipment for use with hydrogen are the most stringent of any of the equipment groups. A substantial leak from an incorrectly installed valve could well cause a large cloud that came in contact with a light switch, electric motor, incadescent lamp, mobile phone &c &c. The Piper Alpha oil rig disaster was caused by a "plumbing" error, so it isn't just hydrogen that's a problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by WRCStan
Hyundai is pretty much out. Hopefully, that's the wake up call for all parties involved that Rally 1 cannot continue as is.Imo, FIA and RBMH should sit Ford, Citroen, Skoda, Toyota and whoever else is interested down and work something like a 2 year transition period with Rally 2s (2026-27) and a new ruleset from 2028 that brings privateers back.
Its like when Gr.B was forbidden and Gr.A became the main class.
A much better championship in every way.
Sorry to say, but FIA/promoter has done a incredible hopeless effort.
Sent fra min SM-S901B via Tapatalk
Sorry, but there is one big difference. When Gr.B was forbidden and Gr.A became the main class, there were manufacturers interested in joining the championship and fight for the titles. Currently nobody from Rally2 manufacturers is not interested to fight for the WRC title and they are always and everywhere promoting it as costumer programme. Nobody of them wants to be on the highest level and also I doubt there will be new car homologated in Rally2. So this way doesnt seems to be a future...Quote:
Originally Posted by skarderud
i feel wrc is going the same way wtcc. the world championship with its more powerfull and expensive cars (compare to rally1) was not that interesting anymore and the tcr championships (compare to R5s) were doing super well, with good entries in national and international levels. once wtcc gave up and went tcr, you can see the hardcore fans complaining for a while but then it fades and they are all happy again now - in a way. of course the memory and the desire to come back to a more glorious era still lives in their minds, but it is what it is. touring car racing is just not a big thing anymore in this modern world the same way rallying is not a big thing anymore. (in the sense of manufacturers spending millions and crazy high audiences everywhere, open tv broadcast etc). and theres the f1 factor craving in the other motorsports championship. we all think "our favorite championship" could be big as f1 if we start doing what they did, but no. f1 is f1, period. nothing can get closer to that, thats a fact. anyway, i think we are there already (at the same 'wtcc' point). just an opinion, ok? im not saying IM RIGHT, its just my view.
Yes, but in the open area, let's say on a stage, you can't achieve such concentration without massive rupture of the tank with simultaneus ignition.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Boyd