Although it was known that Saudi Arabia would join the World Rally Championship, the ten-year duration of the contract was unprecedented. While the country does have some rally traditions, rally events have been quite sparse in recent years. A candidate rally will only be organised next spring, even though Saudi Arabia already has a spot in the WRC calendar for the same year.
Sports events in the Middle East have sparked much discussion across various disciplines. Many find sportswashing troubling, given the human rights issues and other challenges involved.
RallyJournal.com asked at a roundtable with journalists at Rally Sardinia whether the WRC promoter saw any issues with Saudi Arabia.
“Not. Not for us now. No. Things like our our female driver program, which we’ve sort of soft launched and we’ll push more in the next couple of weeks. There is a women’s only rally that’s run in Saudi Arabia by Abdullah bin Khashab. We think a lot of these obstacles are gone,” event director Simon Larkin responded to RallyJournal.com’s question.
“Things like women being able to drive. It’s in the rear vision mirror and we can’t hold things against people forever. A lot of our countries have have things from the past and I think the way that they’re progressing and the way that they want to use sport to progress, I think that’s the message that we’re we’re happy to push,” Larkin continued.
The promoter’s representatives had prepared their responses carefully. They surely knew that the huge deal would not only be met with approval but also attract criticism. The lack of rally culture has been argued against the contract, but Larkin had an answer for this as well.
“Our statement has always been we want two events in South America. We want to keep Japan. We want to keep Africa. We want the US, we want the Middle East. This is our greatest option for the Middle East. We’re delighted,” Larkin began.
“We think it’ll be an amazing event and an amazing story. By the way, with a motorsport culture that largely grew up on rallying, it didn’t grow up on Formula One. It didn’t grow up on a lot of these other sports. I’m afraid it’s actually true. Rallying is way more of the heart and soul of your average Saudi motorsport fan than anything else.”
The last time a WRC event was held in the Middle East was in 2011 when Jordan hosted the event. Larkin hopes that the return of the WRC to the region will also revitalise the local rally series.
“We used to have a lot of privateer competitors from the Middle East that’s dropped off. We think Rally Saudi Arabia can also give a really big boost to the Middle East Rally Championship. We will likely run the test event as the first round of the 2025 Middle East Championship next year. So that means that the Middle East Championship can be bookended by what we think will be very high quality events, which is the test event for WRC and then the WRC event itself,” Larkin explained.
Even though the candidate rally has not yet been held, the promoter has an idea of what kind of story the Saudi Arabian WRC rally could tell.
“It is like a rally of three stories. There’ll be a day of mountains, a day of volcano area and a day of desert. This isn’t Dakar, but it will give the perception that we’re doing a day in the desert. These will be formed sand roads. So each day will have a different flavour,” Larkin planned.
That’s us telling the story of the different flavours of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It’s not just dunes, but it is also about an amazing mountain roads, starting with the sea, the Jeddah Corniche, the mountains, the volcano, the sand, the desert. That’s what we want to try and create this flavour of of how Saudi is so diverse.”
Saudi Arabia’s place in the calendar has also been confirmed. Larkin confirmed that the rally would conclude the 2025 WRC season after the Rally Japan.
