Quote Originally Posted by AnttiL View Post
I beg to disagree here, I would claim the difference between Rally1 and Rally2 cars doesn't make that much of a difference in a yearly budget of a WRC team. It's more dramatic for privateers.

A tyre, a liter of gasoline, a night at a hotel, a flight, monthly salary of an employee, headquarters, service park buildings, a day of testing - everything costs the same, no matter if it's WRC or R1 car.

Let's assume a season with Rally1 costs 100 money units for a manufacturer and the same season with Rally2 costs 75 money units. Do they invest the 75 in something they don't want/need to promote (ICE's, car models without hybrid), or 100 in something they do want to promote (hybrids, street models with hybrids)?
2 years ago an engineer at a works team told me the budget needed for developing a WRC car was roughly 7x the budget needed for an R5 car. It does make a huge difference in the yearly budget of WRC teams. R5-regulations have a lot of limitations (intended to limit costs), making all manufacturers use many parts that are already on existing cars. For WRC they need to develop nearly every part from scratch.