Quote Originally Posted by tommeke_B View Post
2 years ago an engineer at a works team told me the budget needed for developing a WRC car was roughly 7x the budget needed for an R5 car. It does make a huge difference in the yearly budget of WRC teams. R5-regulations have a lot of limitations (intended to limit costs), making all manufacturers use many parts that are already on existing cars. For WRC they need to develop nearly every part from scratch.
Fair point. it also seem the technical barrier to entry for an R5 model is lower - meaning it does not require years of experience and a plethora of experienced engineers to design a competitive R5, just because technology involved is much simpler. This thread has been focusing on cost, but don't forget about "access easiness"