Quote Originally Posted by WRCStan View Post
There's not one central 'Toyota' or 'Hyundai' doing everything, it's normal business structure/divisional stuff for a multinational car manufacture to have an arm like Gazoo or HMSG to be the operation, or to get an external contractor to do it. These are in it for the branding/promo.
M-Sport are in motorsport services and (it's my belief) the relationship with Ford is different. M-Sport are the driving force and because they need the manufacturer affiliation to sell Rally1 services, they bring Ford in. Ford will at least cover the entry fees and meet FIA rules about manufacturer affiliations in return for the 'free' promo. Neither would be doing Rally1 without the other.



A reminder of some rules:

*Rally1 cars have to *look like* a series production car
*Only the manufacturer of that car can homologate the Rally1 car
*Only when a manufacturer enters the WRC will the car be approved and be available to 'Teams'

The thing is, FIA rules be talking like it's 1973 still, that there are hundreds of car manufacturers, maybe some are state sponsored, where they do all their own parts and components and assemble everything under one roof. The second thing is, the Rally1 lot are now constructors, not manufacturers. They build purpose-built race cars with purpose-built engines, with a spec hybrid package, but the FIA likes to believe only manufacturers can be constructors, because traditionally manufacturers have brought the budget.

The rally car 'manufacturers' take a windscreen and a couple of other minor parts from the production car, source everything else from a hundred SME engineering companies that are different to the thousand companies that build components used in the road cars and build something to go rallying with. Compare this to the privateer constructor teams filling grids in the roundy-roundy games.

All these rules are by design to keep privateers out, no? Just because you might not like it doesn't mean it's a problem.
Long answer completely derailed from my point but oh please do go on

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