Quote:
“In my country we developed the AP4 concept. Now we have nine or 10 different makes involved. All the cars look different. I understand that a lot of the local distributors have got behind this concept, which is a good thing.
“My role is to encourage the growth of rallying round the world. The FIA, however, speaks about global concepts of competition cars such as 1.6 turbo engines. It hasn’t been lost on me that Australasia has gone off in a different direction!
“While the AP4 concept is being developed, there is a three year moratorium and many cars use 1.8 litre engines, but from the 2020 season cars will need to have a 1.6 litre engine to be classified as AP4.
“Part of the problem is that the 1.6 engines have been very expensive and relatively unreliable. People prefer to downsize a 1.8 engine which is a bit more reliable, doesn’t cost quite as much, but certainly there is only a place for the 1.6 engines from the 2020 season.”
No wonder if people in Asia-Pacific treat him like a traitor. They have developed a working solution with big interest in it, but now it must be destroyed because some lobby of people in France chose the number 1600 and want to force everyone to obey it. Such a dark-age catholicism.