What to look out for in the 2021 WRC

Against the odds, following the cancellation of Rally Sweden, the 2021 World Rally Championship gets underway this week with its traditional curtain raiser in Monte Carlo.

After the 2020 season was heavily disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a six-month gap between rounds three and four, there is much hope that 2021 can bring a return of some form of normality in which the main talking points come from action on the stages rather than case numbers in service park localities.

With the WRC's benchmark driver taking on each event for the final time, the introduction of a new spec tyre set to spice up the competitive order and intra-team rivalries bubbling under the surface, there ought to be no shortage of plot lines when the season bursts into life on the Monte's icy Tarmac.

1. Sebastien Ogier's final campaign

And now the end is near, and so he faces the final curtain. The world is looking down the barrel of its first Sebastien-free World Rally Championship of the century in 2022, so it would be as well to make sure that we all enjoy this last hurrah.

Don't think for a minute that Ogier will suddenly mutate into a different person as he prepares to step down from the role of 'defining talent of the era' that he has held since 2013. We won't see a relaxed, easy-going chap with a witty quip for every occasion. Let's hope that we do one day, when he is able to look back on his achievements and maybe share a little more of 'behind-the-scenes Seb'.

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But, for now, it all means too much to him, and the seven-time champion keenly feels the burden of leadership that he carries for the sport as a whole. Witness his profound concern for the wellbeing of fans in Mexico, Monza and elsewhere during the pandemic last year as proof that Ogier just wants the WRC to be the best it can in all things.

He will also not hesitate to fire up the big guns and take aim at the FIA at least once a year regarding road order. Ogier's rants about how unfair it all is to have to sweep the stages on gravel events are legendary. What he always manages to overlook is that he tends to win all the same, which is one of the truest barometers of his place in the all-time pantheon.

2. Tanak versus Neuville

For someone with his depth of knowledge about motorsport lore, it remains an intriguing decision for Hyundai principal Andrea Adamo to have paired Thierry Neuville, his team leader since 2014, with 2019 WRC drivers' champion Ott Tanak.

When was the last time a team won the WRC with two number-one drivers battling for the individual crown? The answer is 1995, when the pitched battle between Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae at Subaru ended with the former choosing to leave, despite the Impreza's dominance.

For the past 20 years, we've become used to top teams focusing their efforts around one incandescent talent (usually called Sebastien), with a reliable wingman on hand to scoop up manufacturer points, play the jokers on road order and experiment with tyre choices.

Due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the anticipated battle for the throne in Alzenau did not materialise in 2020, although there were tantalising glimpses of it. Superspecial stages fizzed as opportunities for the two drivers to lay down a marker. Sardinia was a powder keg on which Adamo and the team were cheerfully perched, telling everyone that all was well and there was nothing to see.

Well, it's all or nothing for both Neuville and Tanak in 2021. There can be no excuses and each driver has every advantage at their disposal, with the added incentive of one last chance to best Ogier in a top car before he retires. It's going to be up to Adamo, Dani Sordo and Craig Breen to minimise any potential damage that their battle does to the team's collective score. It's a story that will be worth tuning in for on every rally of the year.

3. The current generation of cars

For fans, it will be important to savour every stage of the 2021 WRC, because next year will bring lower-cost cars with much more shared technology and fewer opportunities to wring performance out of the regulations. They will also most likely have a bolt-on hybrid component and all the weight that comes with that in order to reduce perceived tailpipe emissions on road sections.

The marketing types who fund rally programmes are also understood to be looking at their current hybrid 'urban crossover' models as the basis for their future WRC contenders. Effectively this means taller superminis, which can only add to the compromised dynamics of the next generation.

Hyundai has already worked up a rally-prepared Kona crossover, and word on the street is that M-Sport has been looking hard at the Ford Puma for 2022. Taller, heavier, less developed machines can still provide entertainment when running against each other.

But while we await the first sightings of the new cars, we must also raise a salute to the spectacle that the highly evolved WRC cars have given us since 2017. Just like the Group B cars that they were intended to emulate, we are unlikely to see their kind for some time to come.

4. Tyre strategies

Having an ability to pick the right tyres at the right moment is vital in a category as closely matched as the WRC. Richard Millener's M-Sport team repeatedly showed itself to be the master of the art in 2020, allowing its drivers to slingshot up the order. In the case of Teemu Suninen in Mexico, the strategy paid off with a podium.

Brave decisions such as those taken during Rally Monza will always keep M-Sport in the hunt, but between the Toyota and Hyundai teams it was sometimes the difference between winning and losing.

Often Toyota's crews made the better calls in 2020, particularly on gravel. The only fly in the ointment came in Estonia, when almost everyone came a cropper with delamination on rubber that was never designed for endless long, straight sections bouncing off the rev limiter at 120mph. Hyundai's pairing of Tanak and Breen knew the event well enough to adjust their pace accordingly, and thus finished a comfortable 1-2.

Having Pirelli on board rather than Michelin throws another unknown into the equation. The teams will test as often as budgets and COVID permit, but the full data that has been available to them in recent years will be absent. This will put a premium on the experience of the drivers and on their ability to pick the best mix of compounds and the right number of spares on each and every loop.

5. Driver contracts

The line-ups among the WRC teams for 2021 are virtually unchanged from those that were fielded in 2020, but this will be a fast-and-furious season for contract negotiations.

Neuville's three-year deal at Hyundai ends in November, as does Tanak's two-year contract, while both Sordo and Breen in the third car are hired on a year-by-year basis.

At Toyota, Ogier is heading for retirement, while both Elfyn Evans and Kalle Rovanpera are out of contract at the end of this year. The manufacturer partners who chip in for the budget are also potentially at a time of renewal in their commitments.

M-Sport is less affected by horse trading because it does not have the luxury of a manufacturer's budget, and is dependent on being able to make a convincing case for well-backed drivers to spend their sponsorship funds with them.

Meanwhile, there's a logjam of talent waiting in the wings, from grizzled veterans such as Andreas Mikkelsen and Mads Ostberg to rising stars such as Oliver Solberg and Adrien Fourmaux. A shake-up is coming.

6. WRC2 contests

The support package of RC2 classes provided a mixed bag in 2020, in which the 'junior' WRC3 contenders were usually higher up the overall classification than the WRC2 runners. The same phenomenon is unlikely to occur in 2021, with fireworks expected as a deluge of drivers jostle for a shot at one of the works WRC seats that may become available in 2022.

Hyundai has dropped Russian Nikolay Gryazin in favour of the most-hyped youngster in WRC history, Solberg. What's more, the son of 2003 world champion Petter has leapfrogged Hyundai's 2020 WRC3 champion, Jari Huttunen, to get his chance. Everything points to him being a special talent, but this will be his first season-long campaign since winning the Latvian national championship in 2019.

Reigning WRC2 champion Ostberg may well return for Citroen after Monte Carlo, while the Toksport Skodas of WRC refugee Mikkelsen and Bolivian-Brit Marco Bulacia Wilkinson will be going all-out for glory. M-Sport will also field a Ford Fiesta for Fourmaux after his impressive 2020 season, while the displaced Gryazin will compete in a privately entered Volkswagen Polo.

7. Rally GB's future

Gone (for now), but not forgotten, the absence of Rally GB in 2021 must be a priority for Motorsport UK and WRC Promoter to address. There is an obvious solution to be found in Northern Ireland, where Bobby Willis and a number of prominent local politicians have the drive to make an event happen and an 'oven ready' solution on the asphalt of the province. It will make for a very decent rally, too, with some mindblowing stages and a rich tradition for the discipline on the Emerald Isle that will make it absurdly popular with fans and competitors alike.

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But, for millions around the world, Britain's rally still means misty forests, slippery mud and the magic of Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. Even though it's almost a quarter of a century since such an event was staged, there has been some scuttlebutt about a return to a touring event format. Motorsport UK has apparently decided that the consumption of rallying today may be better suited to that than the current format of central servicing and repeated loops of stages, which were designed for TV broadcasters back when they were abundant.

Let's give it until Easter for the clear preference to be made and then spare no effort - including fan power, pestering politicians to take action - in order to show WRC Promoter that the 90th anniversary of the event in 2022 is all that matters.

Britain has the stages and the wherewithal to make really special things happen. It also has Ford and Toyota as two of the biggest automotive employers in the country, and we have to believe that a creative solution that works for all can be conjured with which to hammer local, regional and national governments over the line.

8. The manufacturers

The automotive industry has been singled out as the embodiment of our unsustainable 20th century past by the EU. As a result, from 1 January 2021, an eye-watering new CO2 levy has been imposed for every g/km above the target of 95g/km set on cars sold in the bloc. This is set to cost each manufacturer billions per year.

The EU's tailpipe tax comes on top of the cost of developing sustainable alternatives and now follows the impact of coronavirus losses in 2020. Factories are closing, jobs are being shed, savings are being sought. In this light, every single motorsport programme must justify its existence.

Not only must those savings be seen in the budget sheets of the manufacturers, but also in those of their OEM suppliers that sponsor the WRC teams. The FIA and the manufacturers will need to work closely to sustain the one branch of the professional sport in which competition cars mingle with regular traffic on the world's highways.