WRC main class in 2025

[Mirek]

1-2 years ago these forums were full of posts on how hybrid will never work in WRC.

Drivers and spectators were to be electrocuted during every crash and everything would catch fire from those batteries.

Look how hybrids work now and how many incidents like this happened even after few quite big crashes.

Electric rally cars work right now ( see Baumschlager) with same itenary as before on same rallies.
That car which is still based on a stock petrol chasiss (so definitely not super-optimized) can run some 500++ hp and still do a rally stage. Wi

Saying that BEVs can't do rallying seems rather short-sighted.

Making conclusions like that after just one cold winter event with no fording is just as silly.

[lmmjvss]

https://youtu.be/0d0MPg7DxbY

This guy is one of the best on YouTube. Its a good and simple explanation on why "e/bio/synth fuel" may not be the "way to go". This is not about motorsport per se but it interesting anyway.

[AnttiL]

https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/fia-a...-wrc-promoter/

[lmmjvss]

If WRC is going electric, gotta be something like this... +1000hp
Something about this car smells like success...
https://www.facebook.com/23337232800...4749133581584/

[Mirek]

If WRC is going electric, gotta be something like this... +1000hp
Something about this car smells like success...
https://www.facebook.com/23337232800...4749133581584/

Man, get real. With 1000 Hp you need 100 kg of batteries for every 2 minutes of acceleration. WRC is not a drag race.

[lmmjvss]

Man, get real. With 1000 Hp you need 100 kg of batteries for every 2 minutes of acceleration. WRC is not a drag race.

What I meant was like... Electric cars will only be awesome when they are awesome. The Extreme-E SUVs are not awesome. Formula-E cars are cool but not awesome. That was what I meant. Skoda Motorsport wrote on dirtfish's post "Somebody said electric cars"? (Talking about the future of rally1), but it will only work if the car is amazing enough for us not to care that much about losing the engine sound.

[lmmjvss]

This was the car Skoda Motorsport (Kreisel Electric) posted on Dirt Fish's Facebook Article's comment session (Antill posted the link to the article).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVxLd8Uv4B8

It is not AWESOME. Its cool that they were able to finish the rally in P3 (https://www.ewrc-results.com/final/6...lye-weiz-2021/) but the car itself its not something that we would support in top WRC class. Paddon's car looks more interesting, for example. Or the VW Car who raced in PIkeS Peak. If WRC wants to go electric, they gotta have something that will make us curious to watch, with interesting tech and aerokits.. it gotta be something that will impress the hardcore fans cuz the youngsters will never reaaaally watch rally (I suggest more Rallycross "crossovers" cuz young people do bat an eye in Rallycross). We will lose the sound tho, which is a bummer and WILL affect the event's attendance =/

[Mirek]

This was the car Skoda Motorsport (Kreisel Electric) posted on Dirt Fish's Facebook Article's comment session (Antill posted the link to the article).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVxLd8Uv4B8

It is not AWESOME. Its cool that they were able to finish the rally in P3 (https://www.ewrc-results.com/final/6...lye-weiz-2021/) but the car itself its not something that we would support in top WRC class. Paddon's car looks more interesting, for example. Or the VW Car who raced in PIkeS Peak. If WRC wants to go electric, they gotta have something that will make us curious to watch, with interesting tech and aerokits.. it gotta be something that will impress the hardcore fans cuz the youngsters will never reaaaally watch rally (I suggest more Rallycross "crossovers" cuz young people do bat an eye in Rallycross). We will lose the sound tho, which is a bummer and WILL affect the event's attendance =/

There are rules for EV in Austrian championship and the car is built to fulfill them. The car has a rallycross mode with double the power but it can not run rallies like that because you need to drive distance in rallies and that is the essential killer of EV use in rallying (despite the fact that the loops in the Austrian championship are much shorter than in WRC).

Anyway the point is that you can easily build a 1000 Hp ICE rallycar and when I say easily, I mean easily. There is really nothing difficult about it. The reason why it is not done is only the rules and nothing else. There is no technical reason which would prevent that. That does not apply to EVs. ATM it is technically impossible to run even 250 kW EV rallycar on the WRC level.

[mknight]

I have been saying the same for a while.

Electric car has to offer something extra for spectators (being cheap doesn't help spectators directly).
By far easiest is power for fast acceleration.

Looking at current Rally1 it could also be speed limited (power reduced with increases speed).

Which is why the Opel Corsa electric is totally wrong idea.

[lmmjvss]

Skoda's CEO had a run in that electric R5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWk3r-S-rqI

I really respect Skoda for their presence in Rallying. Im even feeling guilty that I have not researched anything about this car "they did" with Kreisel. This video is from december. I totally missed it. Its cool and I hope they can try it out in a WRC Rally2 event sometime. This is the company building all the 2022 rallycross powertrains. You bring your model (skoda, vw polo, hyundai, ds3, fiesta...) and they build the electric kit inside.
But IMO this is not AWESOME like it needs to be to impress hardcore rally fans.