WRC mainclass from 2027

**Ferranis** · Yesterday, 18:53

Those kind of last ditch decisions (6 month before 2027, yeah, totally according to plan) are all just a sympthom of WRC (regional will be fine) dying. At some point all the bad decisions of the last years compound and there is just no way forward anymore, see what happened to WRX.

Honest I would also not know any feasible way forward now

**wyler** · Yesterday, 18:57

Originally Posted by Fast Eddie WRC

This decision with just 6 months notice is crazy. How are the Rally2 car Manufacturers supposed to build and test their new aero kit and also organise a full season of drivers and entries.

there's a difference between manufactures timeline and public statements. this have been discussed a lot behind closed doors for sure.
when lancia told "we are interested in wrc27" whitout 27 car, i'm pretty confident they were already discussing this kind of solution"

**WRCStan** · Yesterday, 19:04

Originally Posted by Ferranis

Those kind of last ditch decisions (6 month before 2027, yeah, totally according to plan) are all just a sympthom of WRC (regional will be fine) dying. At some point all the bad decisions of the last years compound and there is just no way forward anymore, see what happened to WRX.

Honest I would also not know any feasible way forward now

Your expectations are on too short a timeline, 2029 is your new actual deadline when there's no Rally2 in the top category.

**Ferranis** · Yesterday, 19:20

Originally Posted by wyler

there's a difference between manufactures timeline and public statements. this have been discussed a lot behind closed doors for sure.
when lancia told "we are interested in wrc27" whitout 27 car, i'm pretty confident they were already discussing this kind of solution"

Sadly questionable when looking at the FIA in recent years. If this was according to plan we should have seen Rally2+ already testing or at least heard rumors about it. The narrative was until recently: WRC27 / Rally2 balanced by weight.

Looks like a panic decision, since only Toyota will be ready for WRC27 and the car being superior to Rally2 on top of that

**Sal yet again** · Yesterday, 19:23

Malcolm trying to protect his revenue stream while M Sport find a Chinese brand who wants to improve perception of the brand.

**wyler** · Yesterday, 19:30

Originally Posted by Ferranis

Sadly questionable when looking at the FIA in recent years. If this was according to plan we should have seen Rally2+ already testing or at least heard rumors about it. The narrative was until recently: WRC27 / Rally2 balanced by weight.

Looks like a panic decision, since only Toyota will be ready for WRC27 and the car being superior to Rally2 on top of that

too much. it's just that this has been discussed and acknowledged between stakeholders in the past months. it's not like manufacturers discovered this today, on dirtfish like fans.

**WRCStan** · Yesterday, 23:26

Originally Posted by Ferranis

Sadly questionable when looking at the FIA in recent years. If this was according to plan we should have seen Rally2+ already testing or at least heard rumors about it. The narrative was until recently: WRC27 / Rally2 balanced by weight.

This Rally2-WRC-kit isn't Rally2+. It's only bits of flimsy bolt-on pieces hanging off the front and rear for the TV cameras. It's really not as exciting or complex as people are making out. Could knock it out in a couple of weeks - any of them paying for wind tunnel time or testing days are massively mis-investing into the sport. It won't be used anywhere but WRC... and for 2 years only.

I agree it's a late call but not it's not detrimental. If there hadn't been an agreement with the new promoter this year, then chances are Lancia would have been running a base Rally2 next year as a 14-round team.

**djip** · Today, 07:48

Am I missing something here ? I read "manufacturers have to commit to 14 rounds to get the kit homologation". It does not mean you have to run a 2 drivers team for 14 rounds. You could as well field a 2 cars team in every rounds with rotating drivers. Toksport is not far from doing this for the past few seasons... For others, you could just drop the name of your team to any other local team to make it look like you entered. Back to the 70's, an importer/local team deputizing for the works team...

And then once the car is homologated, would anything prevent any other user/customer to fielding a (kit) car under his name for a single odd event ? This would be similar to the early WRC (golden) days. Homologation from a factory, then anyone could run its own Impreza WRC or Escort WRC under its own team, for one-off events. With a cheap and easy to bolt aero kit, owner could event bolt/unbolt the kit to switch from local/ERC to WRC events. If true, this would be brilliant.

Am I overly optimistic and reading the press release with rose tinted glasses ? Because if this is not the case, as was said above, we're back with 2-3 teams as today, so the notion of increased competition is daft.