2022 WRC News & Rumours

[AnttiL]

Yes. Plus they already tested the Puma in Finland for fast gravel and snow conditions.

We need to separate different kinds of testing

- Every rally has a PET, one day per driver per rally. So basically three days per rally in some European country. Not necessarily same country.
- The permanent testing area allows unlimited development tests, but usually these are not rally-by-rally PETs. Also the roads are very limited. The Finnish test sites seem to consist of small and fast forest roads, nothing very technical, rough or conversly nothing very wide. And of course no tarmac.
- The weight of permanent area development testing is smaller than previously because there is less homologation jokers and less things to develop (namely aero and center diff settings).
- Previously they had a numbered allocation of test days, meaning that you could skip testing, say, Portugal, and use two days for your Croatia test. But this is not possible anymore since last year with the new rule of allocated days per rally (although I'm not sure whether FIA sanctions doing a tarmac test for a gravel rally?), at least the testing days must be split evenly between the drivers who are participating in said rally.
- What they did last year was extra development testing for the new cars.

But as for M-Sport, I believe they still have their PET days for Rally Sweden available. Hyundai also visited Finland with the first iteration of i20 Rally1 in the summer.