Rally Monte Carlo kicks off 40th season

WRC season 2012 is right with us. It comprises 13 qualifying rounds with series returnee Rally Monte Carlo underway from Wednesday. This legendary event reclaims its traditional position as the season-opener. This will be the 40th year of world championship rallies.

The new season does not bring major changes with it. The main category is being run for the second time for 4wd World Rally Cars equipped with turbocharged 1,6 litre engines. Of the manufacturers Citroën carries on with its DS3 WRC model while Ford still uses its Fiesta WRC and Mini the John Cooper WRC. Volkswagen will be accumulating experience on this level with a Skoda Fabia S2000 of lower specification in readiness for a WRC campaign next year.

The WRC calendar has seen some change for 2012. Rally Monte Carlo was run for the first time no less than 101 years ago and the event starting from Valence will be the 80th edition of the great competition. During its five days the rally will cover a total of 433 kilometres on special stages, which makes it the longest WRC round since the Safari Rally of 2002. Other changes in the calendar are the return of a New-Zealand round in June and the move of the Welsh event from the end of the season to September. The titles will be settled at the latest in Rally Catalunya on 8th-11th of November.

Finland´s world championship rally will take place in calendar slot on 2nd-4th of August. Information about its route and other specifics will be announced in the beginning of February.

Qualifying for gravel rallies

Most notable novelty in 2012 regulations concerns the first day´s running order in gravel rallies. While this has recently been dictated by world championship standings, it is from now on going to be based on the results achieved on the shake-down stage, which in effect becomes qualifying for gravel rallies. This only applies to drivers with P1- or P2-seeding. In the shake-down all P1- and P2 crews can first have two runs over the stage before times recorded on the third attempt become the basis for their starting position. Fastest driver on the stage can then first choose his preferred starting slot for the first leg of the rally, the second fastest picks his slot next, and so forth. For the following days of competition P1- and P2-seeded drivers will start in reversed order according to classification, the leader thereby becoming the last in this group.

In tarmac rallies the starting order will be dictated by championship position and classification at the end of day. P1- and P2-crews will be given a gap of two minutes and the rest will follow at one minute intervals.

Championship points will be awarded to the top ten in a scale of 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1. Furthermore, the top three on the Power Stage will get 3, 2 and 1 bonus points.

Tyre suppliers for the series are still going to be Pirelli and Dmack.

Ford to challenge Citroën

Main protagonists for championship titles will undoubtedly be Ford and Citroën, as has been the case for many years. Favourite to win the drivers´ title must be eight-time champion Sébastien Loeb, who has now been joined at Citroën by last years runner-up Mikko Hirvonen. Having secured a two-year deal with the French team, Hirvonen says the Citroën DS3 WRC is a great car to drive. "Getting beaten by Citroën through the years I´ve often thought that it would be nice to try one some time. Now that I have driven both Ford and Citroën many questions have been answered. I had been wondering why we lost so much in certain situations, but not any more. The Citroën´s handling is superb", Hirvonen praises. Co-operation with the team´s number one, Sébastien Loeb, has got off to a good start. "According to the engineers my preferences on the car´s set-up are quite similar to those of Loeb and that must be good. I believe we can take the team forward with a parallel way of thinking", says Mikko.

Citroën´s main opposition is likely to come from Ford´s works drivers: Finland´s Jari-Matti Latvala and Norway´s 2003 world champion Petter Solberg. Just before the new season Ford confirmed its continued participation in the series for 2012 and 2013.
The works Fords´ livery has been slightly altered after changes in sponsorship. With Abu Dhabi no longer involved the Fiesta WRCs will be blue and white, with some green. Jari-Matti Latvala stays on as the team´s number one while Petter Solberg brings a healthy proportion of experience and back-up. "I have been driving with Ford for several seasons, but this year I have a strong feeling that we have a good chance to win. All pieces are in place for a successful season: a strong team, a reliable car and fast drivers. Put all these together and we can fight for both the drivers´ and manufacturers´ titles", suggests Latvala.

The pretenders

From the Swedish Rally on Citroën will field a secondary team for promising 22-year-old Belgian Thierry Neuville and the experienced Qatari, Nasser Al-Attiyah, who won the series for production cars in 2006. Ford´s drivers in its equivalent second team are bright young Estonian hope Ott Tänak and Mads Östberg of Norway.

Another driver to be seen in a minimum of five WRC events with a privately run Ford is Jari Ketomaa, who last year shook the establishment with his early lead in Neste Oil Rally Finland. "Five WRC starts will give an entirely new basis for showing what I can do on this level. I can now forget about taking excessive risks, which makes it easier to avoid the stupid mistakes that can come from overdriving. My target will still be to stay close to the pace from the outset and to achieve results, which would be good enough for raising further funding, so that I could add in more events later this season. The ultimate goal is to succeed well enough to land a works contract and a full season in 2013", explains Ketomaa.

Mini pursues its WRC attack with a works team, running Spaniard Dani Sordo, who will be seen in all qualifying rounds. The other factory driver, Kris Meeke, is reduced to a more restricted programme, as his place is taken in some rounds by one-off substitutes.

Volkswagen is going to return to world championship rallies next year and the manufacturer already recruited Sébastien Ogier as its leading driver. Ogier´s main work during the coming season is to test and develop Volkswagen´s Polo WRC. Even so, he will participate in each world series rally with a Skoda Fabia S2000 to help the new team learn the ropes on this level. Taking the wheel of another Skoda as Ogier´s alternating team-mates will be young guns Kevin Abbring of Holland and Andreas Mikkelsen of Norway, the latter switching back from the IRC series, where he won the title in 2011.

There will be two series run in support of the main championship, both of these also awarding world titles. The PWRC series caters for 4wd cars of Group N and fwd cars of R3T-category, while for SWRC cars complying with homologations to Super 2000 or R4-categores are admitted. Both these series comprise eight qualifying rounds and each ends with Rally Catalunya in November.

Text: Marko Mäkinen, photo: FIA

Julkaistu: 17.1.2012 21:17

Back