[WRC] News & rumours (part IV) 2016

[Mirek]

The 1.6T WRC regulations are basically same as S2000 regulations and I know for sure that with the S2000 cars no team ever managed to get under 1150 kg within the rules even though the initial weight limit was only 1100 kg (later increased first to 1150 and than to 1200 kg). In fact on gravel many were often over 1200 kg. In 2009 when the limit was 1150 kg I know that all the cars on Barum rally were around 1170 kg heavy. I also remember weighting from Rally Scotland 2012 and Peugeots had around 1220 kg (with gravel sumpguard). I admit that I don't know the recent WRC cars but since the rules are basically same I can't believe that the situation would be very different.

Regarding the F2 don't forget that those cars had 960 kg limit while the WRC cars had 1230 kg. That is nearly 300 kg difference which is huge. They also used traction control and some other features which were not allowed for WRC cars.

Now we are speaking about balancing a handicap of approximately 60-70 Hp, much better handling and cornering (active center differential against no center differential at all), more effective aero, wider track and therfore also bigger suspension travel (don't know how much better brakes the new cars will have but I presume they will). I can not see any simple way to adjust the old cars to be on similar pace as the new ones.