A strict cost cap of €345,000 has been set for the new WRC27 cars. The reduction in costs is hoped to attract new manufacturers and, through that, bring more competition into the World Rally Championship.
The WRC27 cars will be technically equivalent to the current Rally2 cars. So far, only Toyota has confirmed that it is already developing a new top-class car for 2027.
Hyundai’s team principal, Cyril Abiteboul, on the other hand, confirmed during the Central European Rally that “the train has already left the station” — meaning the team no longer has time to develop a completely new car for 2027. Instead, the team may only update its current Rally2 car.
M-Sport Ford’s team principal, Richard Millener, takes a different view. According to him, updating the Rally2 car would only be “a sticking plaster”, and the team’s main objective remains the construction of an entirely new car for 2027.
However, Millener admits that the schedule is extremely tight.
“It’s quite an interesting proposition. But at the moment, we need to understand the finals of, you know, what looks like the promoter sale, which is making good progress. Once we have the information from that, and if there is a new promoter, understanding what their vision is will help us see what we can do,” Millener told Rallyjournal.com.
According to Millener, M-Sport has several possible ways to approach the building of a new car. In practice, as a team operating without full factory backing, it has to work with very different resources compared to the manufacturer teams.
“Our goal is to work with Ford and an OEM to bring that forward,” Millener said.
“But if that can’t happen, then there’s always the option to do it ourselves. However, if you are doing it yourself, it’s a huge investment. So we have to make sure the vision and what we believe in are correct — and that we can get that investment back again,” Millener explained.
Millener was nevertheless forced to admit frankly that nothing will be ready in time.
“I guess we’ll decide in the next few weeks or months. We need to make a decision. But, you know, realistically, it wouldn’t be at the start of ’27, even if we did do something.”
