What are you on about? You don’t have to start rallying in an up to date R class car. Mainly because you wouldn’t want to waste all that money on something you may well crash.

There is nothing about FIA homologated R-class cars that prevents people from starting their rallying competition off (avoiding the the word ‘career’ as that doesn’t really happen until a manufacturer pays you to drive i.e. professionally) in something older and cheaper. The real world isn’t a computer game where your ‘first rally’ is actually a World Rally round in the bottom class of WRC.