Great post by @hartusvuori indeed. Finding the budget will always be an issue... The step from national to international level is too big.

@rallyper, in France they do compete on gravel also. In fact, 4 out of 6 events of this year's 208 Rally Cup are on gravel. On this forum I already explained how French gravel rallies work but here I go again... The French gravel rallies are held on 2 days, in general they have 10 stages (5 different), one day with 6, another with 4 stages. It's a concept I really like. On friday afternoon/night there's scrutineering (usually between 17 and 21 O'Clock). On saturday and sunday morning around 6 O'Clock the drivers go out of parc fermé, with their rally-cars, for the first and only recce-run. They do recce in same order as the starting order. At around 10 O'Clock they return for long regroup and service, many drivers watch onboard-footage from their recce during that period. Pacenotes are crucial, there's only one run in recce. On these gravel event illegal recce is nearly impossible for many reasons. So... one recce-run. Then off you go. Sometimes over 20 exact same cars (208 R2 in this case), let's say 15 with the ambition to win, maybe 5 to 10 with the potential to win... That's a competition where I like to travel for, even if the event is 800km away from my home..

The 2 other events of 208 Rally Cup this year are Antibes and Rallye du Var. I think it's fair to say those are the two most technical events of the French tarmac championship, especially Rallye du Var. It's just one corner after another, no need to mention meters between the corners. It's more important to mention on which side of the road you must finish the corner in order to be on the correct line for the one that follows... There you learn to drive efficient, the drivers who look most boring in technical sections are often the quickest.

I think the costs for this 208 Rally Cup (6 events, with an average of 170km SS per event, and some necessary testing) could be easily over 75 000 euros, depending on team, insurance, testing etc... As a "normal" young driver, it's nearly impossible to gather that kind of money.