Interesting remarks of Carlos Tavares abotu Stellantis getting back in the WRC to Autosport PT.

Interesting discussion as he speaks freely and more openly to Autosport PT, them being a portuguese editor:

"Q.It's a topic that has been on the agenda for fans of the WRC, which is in such trouble, that's why the question was 'out of the blue': “Looking at the rallies, what the WRC needed to do for Stellantis to seriously invest in the Queen category of the World Rally Championship?

This is Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis: “There are several aspects that are difficult, the first is that obviously the new regulation, with hybrids and all that, only had one consequence, which was to increase costs.”

“I don’t know if the image of rallies has become greener because of hybrids, the only thing we know for sure is that it has become much more expensive.”

“Much more expensive and no one knows that they are hybrids, we know, but no one else knows, therefore, the green value of that was marginal because the CO2 emissions are not from the cars, but from all the logistics that go around it.”

Lancia Ypsilon Rally4 HF
“Just like in Formula 1 or any other motorsport, it’s not the cars that make the CO2, they do very little, what does is all the logistics around it.”

“And so I think regulation has taken this to a dead end. So now it's going to sink, like every motorsport where there's inflation, then it explodes, it sinks, then another one starts, it sinks, it's always like that. And the cycles are three to five years.”

“So, they will have to think again, reduce costs as was done with the WEC, which initially also exploded, it was at 200, 300 million, went back to 50, is now at 100, 150 million again, and until it puts a budget cap on the WEC, that will blow up again.

Despite having a fantastic cast at the moment…”

“And that's the problem, it brought little credibility, green (ed., hybrids in the WRC), and a lot of cost, so we're going to have to rethink everything. And until this is rethought, Stellantis will not go there (WRC), at all.”

“As you know, Lancia will now return in Rally4 and benefit from all the work that has been done by Peugeot and Opel, because the chassis are more or less the same, and we have more than 70% market share across the board. the amateur rally sport, with Opel and Peugeot, we have more than 70% of starts in rallies and now, we are going to reinforce with Lancia, and let's start there, the cars are very competitive, also in WRC2 the Citroën is also very competitive ”.

“We're going to go out there and see how things go, but we have no vocation, in fact it's an ethical issue, we can't spend a lot of money, hundreds of millions of euros on motorsport, when we're asking our factory workers to go to work. euro cent hunting.

They are chasing the penny, and you cannot, ethically, spend hundreds of millions of euros on motorsport because they don't understand the problem of marketing and the return on marketing.

Which is real, but has its limits…

And, therefore, if we don't take care to control the costs of motor sport, it will explode, that's what always happens. It goes all the way up, inflation out of control, it explodes, it goes back up, it explodes. And that’s what’s difficult to manage…”

In between the lines you can read that they give f*** all about the cars being hybrids, they just want them to be cheaper.