Why did FIA changed its mind in terms of the regulations ahead of 2025?

The FIA road director, Andrew Wheatley, reveals the three reasons behind the Federation's decision to keep the current regulations unchanged for the next two years. 

The WRC teams were waiting with anticipation which would be FIA's next step for 2025 as there were speculations that the next generation of cars would be Rally1 minor or Rally2 plus. In fact, all the manufacturers stayed in uncertainty for six months and did not know in which direction should move on as there were two options for them. The first one was to develop further the current Rally1 cars or to build new car and to start testing it. Toyota was the only manufacturer which prepared a new Yaris in accordance with FIA's announced regulations on February 28 and tested it in Croatia two months ago whereas Hyundai was focused on bringing upgrades to the current i20N and preferred the simulator rather than building a new i20. It must be mentioned that FIA decided at the previous World Motor Council to drop the plug-in systems from the current Rally1 cars at the end of 2024 and to have less aerodynamics combined with a reduced air restrictor on the rear of the cars. which made them less stable and driveable. However, the news on how WRC future would go on the two coming years came on June 11 where the Federation eventually decided to retain the current Rally1 and Rally2 cars in World Rally Championship until the end of 2026 considering the reasons why Pirelli did not take part on FIA's WRC tyre tender and why some drivers chose to have partial programmes and to participate in other motorsport series, but the most important is that Ford would have probably stopped supporting M-Sport and Hyundai warned FIA with a potential exit from the World Rally Championship.

"There were three key elements, the first was Pirelli not committing to a new tyre deal", Wheatley said.

"The second, the drivers not wanting to do the full championship and the third was, and we always have this discussion about Ford, whether they are in or out, but there was an additional layer and that was about Hyundai continuing in the WRC. 

"That has been a fundamental change in the discussion going forward".

Source: Motorsport.com

Photo Credits: M-Sport