[WRC] News & rumours (part IV) 2016

[Mirek]

I will just say that all tough S2000 and WRC 1,6T is similar in regulations, they are not similar in engineering effort. So clever ways to reduce weight that you wouldn't afford in S2000 is done in WRC.

The main point is that they use full-steel bodyshell and the older generation of cars which was made in time when main marketing strategy was high safety were relatively heavy. The weight limit 1200 kg is enough to get bellow with the design and to use some balast instead. That's what they did also with the S2000 cars. However it's a lot different to reach 1100 kg as the regulations don't allow to replace the heaviest stock parts with special racing ones like with the 2 liter cars, also many parts have minimum weight limit themselves (suspension parts for example). That issue is same for WRC and S2000. You can't win 50-100 kg just by "bigger effort", that can bring further weight reduction by let's say 5-10 kg but hardly more. The S2000 cars are not made by idiots after all (Polo WRC is largely based on Fabia S2000 design just like Fiesta WRC is based on Fiesta S2000 design).

BTW: Hyundai is soon launching a new R5 car, if my info is correct, that car will require ballast to reach the minimum weight.

That's normal. All R5 does. The weight limit 1230 kg is enough to be bellow. Also these cars made of the latest generation of stock cars have a lot lighter bodyshells as the marketing strategy and politics moved towards the low emissions and fuel efficiency.

Basically my assumption are based on weight reducing which manufactures can easily done by themselves, that's the reason why I believe race cars' weight can be tuned according to the regulation rather than their ability.

How exactly do You want to reduce the weight of current WRC cars by 100 kg when You can't/don't want to produce completely new bodyshell panels from different materials, new light-weight suspension etc. (also bear in mind that even such radical changes require change of regulations)?