The 2014 World Rally Championship season has a number of new features for fans and competitors alike and will hopefully spice up the competition this season.
For example, there will no longer be a qualifying session on the day before the rally. Instead, the entrants will start the event in the order of the current drivers’ standings, in the case of both asphalt and gravel rallies.
On the second and third day of a rally, the category P1 (top ten) and P2 (support championship) drivers then start according to the current standings of that rally in reverse order.
Vehicles that re-enter the rally on the basis of the Rally2 rule (restarting next day after not finishing the previous day), then start behind the P1 and P2 groups.
The schedules of all the WRC events are being standardised.
The starting ceremony will always take place on the Thursday and the final special stage will always be held at approximately 12:00 on the Sunday.
In addition, the final stage will always be a Power Stage, in which bonus points are up for grabs in the drivers’ and co-drivers’ championship for the first three cars, and must be at least 10km in length.
However, the ‘Monte’ is an exception to the rule when it comes to the itinerary: it ends with the final special stage – ‘Sospel-Breil-sur-Roya’ – in the dark on Saturday evening.
For the purposes of better identification, a coloured sticker signifying the different categories will be added to the windscreens of all the vehicles in the WRC, WRC2 and WRC3 categories and also in the junior WRC.
The teams will no longer be required to nominate their drivers for the entire season. The manufacturers must register their drivers for at least ten WRC events.
The vehicle categories are to be renamed. World Rally Cars will henceforth start in the RC1 category (Rally Car) and successively downgraded to RC2, RC3, RC4 and RC5.
The changes were announced late last year by the FIA, the governing body for motorsport worldwide. However, these changes will not come into effect until the start of Rally Mexico (March 6-9, 2014).
