WRC cars 3-5 years from now

[AnttiL]

But being successful in WRC2 Pro could increase their R5 car sales, so it would be worth the investment? Also, assuming that WRC2 Pro will be 6-7 events, the running costs of 2 WRC2 Pro entries would be less than one full season WRC entry.

[Mirek]

Exactly. They have been all in WRC2 for two main reasons - to promote sales of R5 cars and to give their young drivers some experience from WRC events. Both is important and will stay important so I believe they will stay.

[AnttiL]

Regarding the thread topic, I don't have an answer. I like the new WRC cars but I also see the problem with the high costs and possibly some of the manufacturers dropping out or having only two cars each (then again, the 1997 season was still exciting with three teams having two cars each, with only one full season driver each). Going to R5 would not be bad on its own as the cars are nice and there's plenty of manufacturers, but it would be like banning Group B, having all the millions of development on the current WRC cars go to waste. And then we have electric/hybrid technologies, I know it's challenging in many ways but I also think that rallying should incorporate technologies that the manufacturers are selling to keep them interested and to have a platform for developing those technologies.

[Mirek]

I don't think You can really change number of WRC teams by technical rules. You just need to give it a fresh restart from time to time to bring new teams in. In my opinion the lifecycle of every top class has a general pattern:

1. New rules are introduced, everyone is on the same zero starting line, good number of teams is involved
2. Good competition, number of teams may for a short period of time even rise over the initial number
3. One or two teams start to be dominate, first teams start to fade away
4. One team is dominant, few others try to fight, others left

5. New rules are introduced to put everyone again on the same zero starting line...

As we could see with IRC it was absolutely same with S2000 cars just like with WRC cars. When Škoda started to dominate others started leaving. Therefore I don't believe switching to R5 is a cure for that.

On the other hand it would bring R5 class into the need of this sort of fresh restart from time to time which otherwise may not be needed if it stays to be only a support class. IMO it's better if R5 rules stay stable for a long period of time. That's good for all privateers and all regional or national championships. If R5 were the top class it would not be possible to keep the rules more or less unchanged for let's say a decade.

[dupanton]

We have 4 works team (you could argue about Ford, 3,5) which more than we ever had in past 10? years. So you can't blame the new technical rules for manufacturers leaving / not coming.

[Rally Power]

Regarding the thread topic, I don't have an answer. I like the new WRC cars but I also see the problem with the high costs and possibly some of the manufacturers dropping out or having only two cars each.

You shouldn’t forget that current rules were unanimously aproved by the manus, only a few years ago, and car costs raise was never seen as an issue. What seems to be now a problem is the calendar expansion policy. The promoter keeps pushing for more and more events, without really caring about teams runing costs and the FIA seems unable to find a proper balance.

In 2014 WRC survey, fans were asked about the kind of cars they wanted to see; surprisingly, fans desire to get more powerfull and more spectacular cars was actually granted by 2017 rules; it’d be interesting to see the WRC making a new survey, asking what kind of events and calendar fans are looking for.