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Showing posts from February, 2024

What's new for the WRC from 2025 and beyond

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  The World Motorsport Council has concluded, and some very important decisions have been taken for the future of the WRC and rallying as a whole. Here's what was decided: On the Promotion side: In order to leverage promotional opportunities around each event and maximise the WRC’s full potential, the FIA will establish a WRC Promotion Team within the FIA in close collaboration with stakeholders from the WRC Promoter, event organisers and manufacturer teams. The WRC Promotion Team’s key focus will be to develop a WRC Charter that will define a set of commitments from all stakeholders to promote the WRC to a wider audience against an agreed set of objectives and KPIs. This coordinated approach will leverage the expertise of each party in order to promote the WRC outside its current fan base as one of the foremost motor sport championships in the world. A new Promotion team will be introduced On the Sporting Regulations: Event organisers will be given more freedom when developing the...

Taking a look at what a potential 2025 WRC calendar will look like

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  This has to be the earliest we've ever had this many rumors about the upcoming season's calendar. In this post we will be examining every country vying for a slot in the WRC's upcoming calendar(s), and also taking a look at what rallies they'll be potentially replacing.  The 2024 WRC calendar, pic from the FIA's website The countries with the more serious bids are, Ireland, Paraguay, Estonia, USA and Saudi Arabia. Other countries have also expressed interest, namely Argentina, Spain and more recently the UK announced they'd be interested in bringing Rally GB  back,  in Scotland. Argentina's bid was a very serious one, being considered a lock for the 2025 calendar, with the Argentines narrowingly missing out on a 2024 slot to Poland. Unfortunately for them, their new government has massively cut down on spending, meaning Motorsport events are in the bottom of their priority list, something which was reaffirmed with the cancelation of their 2024 MotoGP round...

5 Rally Sweden Moments you Forgot!

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  The next stop in the WRC calendar is Sweden, the only snow rally of the season! Sweden has been part of the calendar in all but 3 seasons, and is a rally with rich history. Understandably, when a rally is synonymous with the WRC like with Sweden, there many moments that are forgotten by even the most hardcore of WRC fans. But fear not, because I am here to remind you of 5 Rally Sweden moments that you might have forgotten about! Without further ado, let's get into the list! 2006 - Gigi and Daniel fight for their maiden podium  2006 was a transitional season for the WRC. With only 2 fully fledged manufacturers in the series (a far cry from the 6 of the previous year) and with Subaru being far too uncompetitive, there were only two drivers who you could realistically expect to consistently win rallies, Marcus Gronholm in the Ford and Sebastien Loeb in the privateer Xsara. Because Subaru's 2006 challenger was so awful, the last place of the podium was often up for grabs for pri...

Let's take a closer look at the WRC's New Rally format for 2025

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  It was last Tuesday when I got a notification on my phone that Rally Sardegna's Rally Guide had come out. "Alright", I said, "can't be anything too crazy in there". But there was, checking the itinerary, I saw the total and it was only 266km! Huh? Did I miss a day or something? Nope, that was it. After taking a closer look there was this quote by the organizers that intrigued me: "The 21st Rally Italia Sardegna presents a compact route based on the new FIA guidelines from 2025, with only three days of racing." So this 266km edition of Rally Sardegna, could be what the future WRC rallies will be like for the upcoming season. So, let's take a closer look at what this "48 hour Rally'' format is, and let's examine its positives and negatives.  A map of the 2024 edition of Rally Sardegna from Rally Maps. Check the full maps here So let's start with what the thinking behind this new format is. The rally now starts a day later f...