Understanding rally car categories at 2021 Safari
Abdul Sidi
The Rally Pyramid is a hierarchy of rally car technical specifications defined by the FIA for use in world and regional championship rallying.
Each tier of the pyramid is known as a Group, despite little to no variations or classes within the group
At the top of the pyramid is the group Rally1, used only at elite level in the World Rally Championship (WRC).
At the foot of the pyramid is Rally5, designed for cost effective introductory rallying.
The design of the pyramid aims to modernise the steps of progression and give structure to the technical regulations of cars used across the sport in a similar way to terminology used in formula racing.
The biggest differences between each group of cars is the performance and the costs involved to manufacture, run and maintain them.
From 2022, the support championships of the WRC and European Rally Championship (ERC) will also be renamed and reconfigured to reflect the tiers of the pyramid.
With the launch of the Rally Pyramid in 2019, three classes of Group R (including any sub-classes) were immediately renamed as Groups of the rally pyramid.
R1, R2 and R5 became the technical standards for Rally5, Rally4 and Rally2 respectively.
Rally1 cars would replace the existing World Rally Car with new regulations in the 2022 WRC season, although the FIA sporting regulations started using ‘Rally1’ terminology in 2020.
The newly created Rally3, designed to cover the performance gap between Rally4 and Rally2, introduced a new rule set of cars for 2021.
Group Rally1 cars are due to be introduced in time for the 2022 World Rally Championship season as a replacement for the World Rally Car which has been in place in various forms since 1997.
The regulations, formed and approved by the existing WRC teams, were designed to ultimately reduce costs compared to the current ‘WRC+’ car and also reflect the growing trend of hybrid retail equivalent models.
To help reduce costs, many parts will become standardised or removed from the current world rally car.
The rules surrounding the manufacture of the chassis means Rally1 will be the first real break from consumer production cars in World Rallying since Groups B and S were abandoned in the 1980s.
Key new features will include:
Allowing for scaling dimensions of the car centrally developed ‘space frame’ roll cage structures to improve safety and costs and use of synthetic fuels, claimed to be renewable and sustainable
The addition of bolt-on hybrid power units centrally provided by Compact Dynamics, giving an additional 100kw of power.
