Could qualifying resolve the WRC’s 2027 road order conundrum?

The World Rally Championship’s new 2027 technical regulations have sparked a new debate about road order, with the return of qualifying among the options being discussed for next year.

Determining the starting road order for events has long been a bone of contention among crews in the service park, and now the topic has resurfaced again with the WRC set to introduce radical technical regulations.

From next year the WRC will enter a transitional phase as it embarks on a new era. The current Rally1 machines will be replaced by WRC27 machinery built to a cost cap of €345,000, featuring a spaceframe chassis and double wishbone suspension, and will be largely based around Rally2 components. The cars will offer a similar performance to the current Rally2 cars. 

As it stands, Toyota and tuner operations RMC Motorsport and Project Rally One have committed to building cars for the new regulations for next year. To ease the transition into the new rules, the FIA has confirmed Rally2 machines will be able to compete under the same umbrella as the new WRC27 cars. 

To ensure the playing field is as fair as possible, Rally2 manufacturers can homologate an upgrade kit – costing €7,500 – to offer greater aerodynamic parity between the two types of machinery. Rally2 cars featuring upgrade kits will be eligible to compete in the top level alongside WRC27 cars in 2027 and 2028. The kit will comprise new homologated front fenders, a front bumper and a rear aerodynamic device with Rally2 cars also shedding 10kg from their current minimum weight.

One side effect of this regulation is road order. In theory a Rally2 starting lower down the order on an event could receive vastly better road conditions on gravel rallies than the top-level WRC27 cars. This could offer a high advantage that would be magnified further without the current power disparity between Rally1 and Rally2 in play. One extreme scenario could result in a privateer Rally2 crew starting 50th on the road being able to fight for the overall victory.    

With Toyota being among the first to invest in designing and building a WRC27 car, ensuring a fair solution to determine road order is a situation the marque is keeping a close eye on for next year.

The FIA confirmed to media that it is assessing options to determine the road order.

“I think it’s a really important topic that we can’t get away from the magnitude of,” said Toyota technical director Tom Fowler when asked by Autosport about the road order situation. 

“If we look at a gravel rally today and you take car number one in a Rally1 car, and you take your first Rally2 car running in maybe 12th position, the Rally1 car can just about beat the Rally2 car in 12th position – and the difference in power is 100 horsepower. So it means that the difference in road order currently between one and 12th is equal to the performance of 100 horsepower.

“So in the technical regulations, if you have the same power, you can never find this level of performance. It’s impossible. So you have to manage it in a sporting way to understand that if you’re going to compete with cars with the same power-to-weight ratio, the cars have to be in similar conditions, which can only be done from the sporting side.

“So I think the target is clear for the sport: we have to make sure that at the end the most competitive driver in the most competitive car is still able to win. And any falsification of this by strange road order is not really reasonable.”

Is bringing back qualifying the answer?

This road order conundrum has raised the topic of the WRC re-introducing a qualifying stage before the rally to determine the road order. The system was last used by the WRC in 2013 but remains active in the European Rally Championship.

In the ERC, where Rally2 is the top category, the system has proved to be the fairest way to determine road order at the start of rallies. The top 15 drivers on the qualifying stage, which is run in championship order, are reversed to set road order on gravel events, while the fastest 15 start the rally in qualifying order on asphalt rounds.

Esapekka Lappi, Enni Malkonen, Hyundai World Rally Team Hyundai i20 N Rally1

Photo by: McKlein Photography / LAT Images via Getty Images

The FIA has confirmed that reintroducing a qualifying stage is among its options under consideration for sporting regulation changes in 2027. It aims to have the sporting regulations defined in October.

“We are working on the sporting regulations. The plan is to bring the first parts to the World Motor Sport Council level in August. The work is ongoing and we have a few weeks to finalise it, then we have to run it past the WRC Commission,” said FIA road sport director Emilia Abel.

“I feel that there is still some confusion about which cars are in Rally1 and eligible to compete in the constructors’ championship and which are the options for the Rally2 cars. So the first idea would be to approve the championships and the eligibility of the cars around it, and then the second phase is to start about the details of what we are changing. Let’s say the whole sporting regulation aim is to bring it to the October World Motor Sport Council meeting.”

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