Quote Originally Posted by fiscorpun View Post
"The working group has stipulated a minimum of 25 competitive cars in the WRC’s premier category from round one next season."

...doubt. If they are going for Rally2+ cars, we will have to believe that theres at least 17 privateers willing to UPGRADE their cars in order to fit the new top class together with 3 hyundais, 3 toyotas and 2 msports (well... IF they are all willing to keep the "factory teams", of course... and I'd guess Hyundai would quit the factory team)
BTW... really weird to just decide this number at a table, eh? "25 cars starting for 2025". Yeah, right. Whos paying for that? Weird.
THO... If they go with Rally2, then Fine. Its solved, we WILL HAVE enough privatters. Screw Hyundai, Ford, Tierry and Ogier if they "dont want to drive Rally2 cars" hehe
Manufacturers comes and goes, no big deal on that. If you have an exciting championship with good events, the show will be higher and thus you could have wealthy privateers with good sponsors to pay the bills. People would still come to see a better show, even though with "cheaper" cars and TV figures would increase with more exciting battles with different cars and teams/drivers.

Said that, Hyundai could remain as customer racing, which at the end of the day doesn't affect the show, just naming difference. Same for M-Sport, they would remain as just "M-Sport" without Ford backing. It already happened when Ford withdrew after 2012 (and was "just" Qatar M-Sport WRT). The cars will be on the entry list either way.

Same would apply with Skoda for example, while we could see a comeback from Lancia or also Subaru, which was rumoured to be interested to a cheaper commitment by using Haas F1 business model (purchasing parts and engine from Toyota and maybe outsourcing to a developer like Prodrive in the past).

The whole thing is still how much commitment we would have from WRC Promoter to "sell the brand". Liberty Media in Formula 1, but staying in Europe we can watch at Ratel's SRO creature with GT World Challenge (which grew ridicolously good in the last couple of years!), shows that without investments on crafting something catchy, you wouldn't have any return.