The FIA has again postponed the decision on the 2023 WRC calendar, despite the fact that it has been an issue that has been on the table at the last meeting of the World Motor Sport Council.
The WRC still does not have a calendar set for the 2023 season, since the FIA has once again postponed its definition. Despite the fact that everything seemed to indicate that the meeting of the World Motor Sport Council that was held in London would be the stage in which the World Rally Championship calendar was finally going to be ‘released’, the reality is very different and nothing is clear yet.
For several months it has been rumored that the WRC calendar had already accepted bases. Fourteen rallies, eight in Europe and six far from the old continent. Returns like Mexico or Chile underpinned and novelties like Saudi Arabia. However, the promoter of the WRC and the FIA they can’t find the way to define the 2023 calendar of the World Rally Championship, initially for logistical reasons.
The FIA World Motor Sport Council held in London has not served to ratify a calendar, as expected
For this reason, although it was expected that the World Motor Sport Council held in London could ratify a draft of the WRC calendar for 2023, the truth is that the decision on it has been postponed again. Although no further information has been given in this regard, it is understood that this delay is caused by the difficult fit of dating on American soil with the Safari Rally in Kenya, among other issues.
Although there is no black on white calendar, there are issues that are more than defined in principle. Rally Mexico will once again be part of the WRC in 2023 after his absence during the COVID-19 pandemic, while the New Zealand Rally does not repeat compared to this yeareven if the test has been a complete success in organizational terms.
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The pieces don’t fit
Although logistics is the great workhorse of the WRC promoter when it comes to closing the already ‘eternal’ calendar of the 2023 WRC, there are other points that are offering great doubts to those responsible for the World Cup. In fact, It is still not clear what will happen with the RACC Rally or if the proposal for a rally in central Europe with Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria really goes ahead.
Too many unknowns to be defined to publish a calendar that, yes, has its start more than confirmed. The 2023 WRC season will kick off in January with the Monte Carlo Rally just a few days after the end of the Dakar and will continue on the snow at the Swedish Rally, the only winter event in the championship.
Expense control
Regardless of the calendar, what the World Motor Sport Council has approved in relation to the WRC has been a reassessment of the cost cap introduced to control the costs of design, construction and development of the cars under technical regulations ‘Rally2’, ‘Rally3’, ‘Rally4’ and ‘Rally5’. This new calculation attends to the uncontrolled increase in prices of certain approved components.
In line with the brands participating in each of the categories, the FIA and the WRC promoter have decided follow the price indexing formula recently agreed by Formula 1. It has also been agreed that further changes to spending caps could be applied if prices contain their upward trend in a scenario of maximum inflation.
Photos: Red Bull Content Pool