In August, during Rally Finland, Hyundai announced that it will continue in the World Rally Championship next season as well. However, the team’s future beyond 2027 still remains uncertain.
The technical regulations of the World Rally Championship will undergo major changes for the 2027 season. The car, currently referred to as the WRC27, will in terms of technical characteristics correspond to the current Rally2 cars. In this way, costs have been brought down.
While Toyota has already announced that it is currently developing an entirely new car for the 2027 season, Hyundai is not following that example.
Hyundai team principal Cyril Abiteboul revealed earlier in an interview with DirtFish that “the train has already left the station” in regard to the development of the 2027 car. As one possible option, Abiteboul hinted that the team could compete in the 2027 season with its current Rally2 car, using it in the top category.
However, during the Central European Rally, Abiteboul could not confirm anything concrete.
“I know that there is a change in the technical regulations, but for me, sport is much more than just technical regulations. Technical regulations are almost ancillary to the sport. We’d like to understand the big picture — something that we still lack visibility on,” Abiteboul told Rallyjournal.com.
“We’ve been in rallying for 12 years, 13 next year. In my opinion, from a marketing and strategic perspective, it makes sense to extend our participation to build awareness of our programme. Obviously, you cannot do that at any cost or under any circumstances. That’s the situation we’d like to understand a bit better in order to build on it. But again, that will be part of Andrew’s (Wheatley) mission,” Abiteboul continued.
It has not yet been confirmed whether Hyundai will continue in the World Rally Championship beyond the 2027 season at all. But what would it take for the Korean team to still be competing then?
“We know we need something more sustainable from a financial perspective, which means working both on the cost and on the value of the championship. I think we should do both. The sport should be a bit more reasonable on costs — it’s become far too expensive for anyone. But the value should also rise. So we need to work on both aspects,” Abiteboul said.
“We believe there should be a stronger connection between road cars and the types of cars we are racing in rallying — in the technology that we can promote. Right now, there’s a growing gap between the definition of rallying and where mass production is going. I’m not suggesting that it should go fully electric in all forms, but there must be something to bridge the two and justify ongoing participation. This bridge, in my opinion, needs to be built,” he added.
Abiteboul also sees risks in the new technical regulations, even though they aim to address the significant need to reduce costs.
“We also need to be much more pragmatic with a set of sporting regulations. Because yes, you will have the new WRC car, you will have Rally2. But okay — what is the coexistence of everything? Is it a customer racing sport? Is it still a manufacturer sport? These are the kinds of questions that, for me, are still very much up in the air and need to be addressed,” Abiteboul underlined.
