Next season will be the last in the World Rally Championship with the current Rally1 cars. From 2027 onwards, new WRC27 machines will appear in the world rallies. The idea has been that after next year, the price of the top-class car would drop to half of what it is now.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) will elect its new president in December. The candidates are Mohammed bin Sulayem, who has led the organisation since 2021, and Tim Mayer, who announced his candidacy in the summer. The future of rallying is certainly one of the big campaign themes.
Bin Sulayem has not been active around the rally service parks, and reportedly his interest in rallying is not particularly high, even though he himself was involved in the sport for decades. Mayer visited the World Rally in Chile in September, where he explained his views on the future of rallying to the Dirtfish website.
“For me, the real job of the FIA is to support our member clubs. And that means supporting rallying. That means really looking forward at what we can do for rally over the next 10, 20 years. That means planning. It means looking forward and thinking about what we do for powertrains, what we do for the construction of the cars,” says Mayer to Dirtfish.
Mayer has never been actively involved in the rallying world but earned his stripes in the IndyCar series and the American Le Mans Series, as well as serving as an FIA steward. However, his surname is firmly rooted in the world of motorsport, as his father, Teddy Mayer, is known as one of the founders of McLaren’s Formula 1 team.
“There’s a few elements to that that are fundamental that we really need to take a step back and think about the future of rally. As an example, we’ve gone away over the years from production-based rally cars. I think this is an area that we really need to refocus on. How do we make production-based rally cars so that the sport can be more affordable?”
“The R1, R2, R5 cars, these are great cars if you’re based in Europe. If you’re based in Africa, for instance, or you’re based here in Chile for instance, they’re very expensive cars. They’re very difficult to get a hold of. They’re very difficult to maintain. So we’ve got to really fundamentally rethink how we approach rally.”
Safety is a major factor in modern rally cars. Even if the price of the cars were to drop, according to Mayer this would not necessarily be reflected in safety. When thinking about the term production car, the first thing that comes to mind are the Mitsubishi Lancers, which are still driven in national series, even though their production ended nearly 20 years ago.
“Safety is incredibly important but it is possible to have safe production-based rally cars. The technology now exists for us to go in and do the research and development on the roll cages, on the safety spaces that you need and to work with the manufacturers, to work with the local cars, or to keep the speeds down so that you’re not always going for the ultimate speed with a production-based car.”
“For instance, they make [Volkswagen] Polos and Hyundais in Africa. Those kinds of cars ultimately need to be able to be made into the rally car. If not, we’re going to lose large chunks of the world from the rally community.”
Mayer will announce his candidate for vice president at the end of October. The FIA presidential election will be held on 24 October. Bin Sulayem won the 2021 election against the Briton Graham Stoker.
