Teenage rally star Kalle Rovanpera has been selected as one of the eight drivers who will fight for a Hyundai factory seat in the 2018 World Rally Championship’s WRC2 class. The seven drivers who join Rovanpera in the next stage of Hyundai’s process to find a future star are current WRC2 competitors Emil Bergkvist, Gus
Rally
Rally Poland will be dropped from the World Rally Championship schedule for 2018 following repeated breaches of spectator security, with Turkey taking its place on the calendar. The event’s demise after four successive years (six in total) in the WRC was telegraphed when the FIA experienced further problems in trying to control spectators at the
Citroen driver Kris Meeke will have to wait until the start of September before his participation in the World Rally Championship’s Rally Catalunya round is confirmed. Meeke broke the suspension on his C3 WRC on last Thursday night’s opening spectator stage of Rally Germany in Saarbrucken. He returned under Rally2 rules and was forced to
Ott Tanak says his Rally Germany win has played him into the thick of the fight for this year’s World Rally Championship title. The M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC driver scored a comfortable victory last weekend, after an inspired tyre choice in Friday afternoon’s wet conditions propelled him to the front. Tanak’s win narrowed the gap
Sebastien Ogier has revealed he found World Rally Championship title rival Thierry Neuville’s Rally Germany stoppage “difficult” and “strange” to deal with during the event. The rivals had arrived in Germany level on points and started the second day third and fourth, with Neuville ahead. Neuville’s Hyundai’s left-rear suspension broke in a cut on Saturday’s
Ott Tanak clinched victory in Germany as his M-Sport Ford team-mate Sebastien Ogier rebuilt a 17-point World Rally Championship lead over Thierry Neuville. In the lead fight from the outset, Tanak hit the front for good amid Friday afternoon’s torrential rain – when he was one of a handful of drivers to give the WRC’s
Ott Tanak protected his lead over Andreas Mikkelsen on the first loop of Rally Germany’s final day, as Sebastien Ogier lost touch with the leaders in third. Although Citroen driver Mikkelsen went faster than Tanak’s M-Sport Ford on both early Sunday stages and declared he wanted to keep the pressure on, he was only able
Rally Turkey looks to be closing on a return to the World Rally Championship, with Croatia also tipped for a 2018 calendar spot. Though New Zealand had initially been thought the most likely addition to the 2018 WRC schedule, Autosport understands its hopes have diminished. Sources within WRC Promoter and the FIA have confirmed to
Sebastien Loeb could return to World Rally Championship competition in a Citroen C3 WRC, but not until the 2018 season at the earliest. Citroen has invited nine-time WRC champion Loeb to test its 2017 car in the coming days. It will be the first time they have worked together since Citroen dropped Loeb from its
Private Ford Fiesta WRC driver Mads Ostberg will start Rally Finland with a new co-driver after he and Ola Floene parted ways for “sporting reasons”. Floene moved from co-driving Andreas Mikkelsen to work with Ostberg at the start of the 2016 World Rally Championship season, in a three-way co-driver reshuffle in which Mikkelsen, Ostberg and
Citroen says Kris Meeke “needed a break” and wants judgement on its decision to bench him for Rally Poland to wait until he rejoins the World Rally Championship in Finland. The absence of Meeke – who began 2017 as Citroen’s title hope – prompted difficult questions for team principal Yves Matton in Poland last weekend,
Rally Poland looks set to lose its round of the World Rally Championship for 2018 following safety infringements on last week’s event. The FIA gave Rally Poland a yellow card warning after spectator control problems in 2015 and it would have been automatically ejected from the WRC had those issues been repeated last year. Sources
World Rally Championship leader Sebastien Ogier says there was no point try to ‘force’ a Rally Poland result with “kamikaze” risks. Winner Thierry Neuville cut Ogier’s advantage to 11 points last weekend, as the reigning WRC champion had two punctures, a spin and an alternator problem. Ogier fell as low as sixth but finished third,
An outbreak of the Phytophthora ramorum tree disease has forced Rally GB organisers to make a second significant change to the route for Britain’s round of the World Rally Championship. The fungus-like disease has been discovered on trees on Myherin, which is the first gravel stage of the October 26-30 rally. As a result, it
Rally Poland winner Thierry Neuville has admitted he was frustrated by his rivals’ inability to keep World Rally Championship title rival Sebastien Ogier off the podium on Sunday. Neuville’s third victory of 2017 cut Ogier’s lead from 18 to 11 points with five rounds of the season remaining. Ogier looked as though he would finish
Thierry Neuville reduced Sebastien Ogier’s World Rally Championship lead to 11 points by winning an incredibly hard-fought Rally Poland. The event featured 11 changes of lead and until Saturday afternoon no one managed to extend an advantage beyond 4.5 seconds out front, despite heavy rain making conditions extremely challenging on Friday in particular. What began
Thierry Neuville now has a clear path to Rally Poland victory after a mistake from his lead rival Ott Tanak on Sunday morning. Tanak had grabbed first place back from Neuville by setting the pace on the opening Orzysz stage, where the M-Sport Ford beat the Hyundai by 4.9 seconds and moved ahead overall by
Thierry Neuville moved back into a narrow Rally Poland lead on Saturday evening after the latest twists in the close-fought World Rally Championship battle. Neuville had fallen from first to second on the Pozezdrze stage when he picked up a rear puncture on his Hyundai. But while that put Ott Tanak’s M-Sport Ford into a
The battle for Rally Poland victory was thrown into chaos on SS16 when lead combatants Thierry Neuville, Ott Tanak and Jari-Matti Latvala all hit trouble. Tanak emerged in the lead but without a rear wing and Latvala retired, but Neuville is likely to be in the best situation as though he has fallen to second
Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak continued to swap the Rally Poland lead on Saturday morning, while World Rally Championship leader Sebastien Ogier damaged his car and dropped back to sixth. Neuville began and ended the loop with a 1.3-second lead over Tanak, but they swapped positions twice in between. Though it initially looked like Neuville