Rally - WRC cars

It’s purely coincidental, but in the week that the MSA dropped its bombshell news that there will be no BRC next year, comes news that the SRC will drops its restrictions on WRC machinery for 2015.

From next season, all vehicles which comply with MSA technical regulations will be eligible to score points in the ARR Craib MSA Scottish Rally Championship.

Dave Robson, Chairman of the ARR Craib MSA Scottish Rally Championship commented: “We feel that the time is now right to remove the restriction on eligible vehicles.  We are conscious that those WRC cars currently permitted are now over 10 years old. Some are more likely to be owned by collectors rather than competitors and others are becoming hard to find parts for. In addition, later generation WRC’s are potentially within reach of more competitors than the latest R5 specification cars, whilst offering a similar level of performance”. 

He added: “We understand that this decision may not be universally popular but we must ensure that the championship remains relevant, to help promote healthy competition throughout the field”. 

The current regulation came into force three years ago, and since then has been reviewed periodically by the Championship Management Committee. At the present time, the Championship Regs list the cars which are eligible including the Escort last homologated in 1997, Focus up to 2002, Accent to 2003, 206 to 2002, Cordoba to 2000, Octavia to 2002, two Impreza models to 2000 and 2002, and two Corollas up to 1998 and 1999.

Whether this will be a popular move remains to be seen, but the big advantage of those early WR cars was the fact that they were mechanically quite simple compared to the newer cars which require a 7 year old to master the on-board buttons and displays, and an electronics engineer to work on the software which controls the mechanical functions.

Running a ‘modern’ WR car is not for the faint hearted or the wallet-shy, but even more worrying is the fact that they don’t come with a manufacturer’s Handbook and you can’t buy a Haynes WRC manual in Halfords.