Q & A with Subaru's David Lapworth

Autosport.com caught up with Lapworth in Catalunya to hear his concerns.

Q. What do you think of the current World Rally Car regulations?

David Lapworth: I don't think we're far away from the perfect car at the moment.

Q. How do you feel about the regulation changes coming for the cars?

DL: I'm sick of technical discussions coming before any kind of long-term vision in the sport. They say we need to write some new rules, well tell us what kind of championship we're writing rules for: is it an amateur championship, a professional championship, a television spectacle, is it an adventure - what's it meant to be? But they don't do that. All they say is that they want it to be low cost. Well low cost for who?

The people who are successful have a vested interest in not introducing changes which might make results more unpredictable. For example, Citroen are adamant that they don't want to run first on the road and with the fastest car why would they? They didn't want tyres without mousse; there was a feeling that Sebastien Loeb might get a puncture and not win a rally.

For me, you need to give people coming into the sport a chance of sharing in the glory. You want the best team and the best driver to win the championship, but they don't need to win every rally.

Q. What do you think needs to change?

DL: We need less intervention in the rules. If we were told in five years that rallies would be, for example, starting in Paris and ending in Monaco, then okay, we can plan for that. We can make it work. But at the moment, every five minutes, we have somebody changing their mind. There's no long-term vision about where we're going. Every year we go in another direction. Given the long-term planning, anything is possible.

Q. What sort of timeframe should the World Rally Car regulations work to?

DL: If you think most manufacturers have a five-year model cycle and they're normally committing to their next model three or five years ahead - I'm sure somebody in Subaru can tell you what the next Impreza is likely to be, they'll have some concept already - that's the kind of timeframe we want to be working to.

If we think we need to be using much smaller capacity, turbocharged engines, with some energy recovery systems, fantastic - but you need to tell me now so the STi version can be developed with that in mind. It's no good saying it's got to be a one-litre turbocharged engine for next year when we've just launched a two-litre version.

Q. Your new car is an example of that...

DL: We've just invested in a new gearbox for our car. Two years from now, they want to change the gearbox regulation. Okay, we'll change the gearbox regulation. But when will we get the million pounds back that it cost us to develop the new gearbox? We never will. Even if it saves £5,000 per rally how many rallies is that to get back that investment? We can do anything if we're given the notice, but you never get that.

Q. What's the answer?

DL: If we had somebody who has a stake in making this thing more successful, things would be different. At the moment, there's nothing at stake for people - it doesn't matter to them whether they have three manufacturers or 10 manufacturers. Does it matter to them whether the television audience is 100,000 or two million? At the moment it doesn't matter a toss, it doesn't make any difference. That's got to change.