Why WRC's hybrid path could leave it at a crossroads

After a lengthy period of prevarication, Hyundai’s head office in South Korea has approved the build of a 2022-spec World Rally Car and committed to stay in the World Rally Championship.

With this final piece of the jigsaw in place, the WRC was thereby free to announce this week that its three manufacturers – Hyundai, Toyota and M-Sport – will be sticking with the series until at least 2024.

In every conceivable way, this announcement is the best possible news for the series and its global fanbase in the current climate.

But why was Hyundai in two minds about sticking with a series which it has supported since 2014?

The answer is that the new regulations will add a hybrid component to the WRC’s powertrain in order to allow a percentage of the road sections in between the timed stages to be run without tailpipe emissions.

That’s right: in an era when manufacturers will go to almost any lengths to showcase their green credentials, Hyundai paused with the Kool Aid bottle at its lips to ask itself if this was indeed what it should be doing with its WRC programme.

Podium: Hyundai President Scott Noh, Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

The hybrid unit that will be employed for the next three years is a bolt-on system provided by German OEM supplier Compact Dynamics, which is closely aligned to Audi.

It has zero intellectual property from the competing manufacturers and basically adds weight and complexity to the cars for the sake of ticking the sustainability box.

Let’s be clear: the level of technology transfer from the new WRC hybrids towards more efficient powertrains for future road use will be zero. They are built and supplied at a fixed cost to do a specific job and nothing more, which does indeed raise quite a big question about why they are being added.

Rather than drive the manufacturers forward to utilise the sport as a technological testing ground, to fulfil its raison d’etre, they have instead been plied with standardised components to reduce cost but which also reduce relevance

Motorsport came into existence as a means for manufacturers and their OEM suppliers to drive forward the products that they sell in the showroom. Without that raison d’etre at the core of every discipline of the sport, we would all still be driving cars on wooden chassis with engines that start by means of cranking a handle. We wouldn’t have headlights, windscreen wipers or pneumatic tyres; still less forced induction, four-wheel drive or electronic engine management systems.

When the new WRC technical package was announced last year, I asked Hyundai Motorsport chief Andrea Adamo if he felt that the manufacturers shouldn’t instead have taken the opportunity to use competition as a technical proving ground for better hybrid systems in future.

I got a one word answer in reply: “No.”

Andrea Adamo, Team principal Hyundai Motorsport

Photo by: Vincent Thuillier / Hyundai Motorsport

Back in 2009, a very different vision of how motorsport might progress was presented by the then-FIA president, Max Mosley, who put in one of his rare appearances at a WRC event when he arrived in Portugal.

Rather than talk about the WRC specifically, however, Mosley used his appearance to launch his concept of a single 1.6-litre ‘world engine’ for all FIA-sanctioned categories from the grassroots to F1.

This was the year in which F1 first introduced Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems but these proto-hybrids were all soundly beaten by a much more traditional car from Brawn GP.

Ross Brawn’s double diffuser stole all the headlines but a cornerstone of his team’s success came from building a lighter, nimbler and less complex car that its engineers understood from the get-go. Better still, it didn’t make their hair stand on end when they touched it!

Thanks to Brawn GP’s dominance, KERS and hybridisation were a bit of a joke by the time that the president arrived in Portugal with his big idea.

Mosley’s premise was that internal combustion engines had reached the end of their evolutionary life and so it made sense for the sport and the manufacturers to focus instead on where the gains could be made for the industry as a whole: hybridisation.

“If the technology exists to recover and re-use energy then obviously we should do that,” he said, suggesting that the difference in performance between, say, a Formula 1 and a Formula 3 car, or a WRC versus a domestic rally car should be down to the evolution of its hybrid technology.

Jenson Button, Brawn GP BGP001 Mercedes crosses the line to win the race to the cheers of his mechanics as Mark Webber, Red Bull Racing RB5 Renault passes on the track

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

Opinion was split in the media centre that day: half of us thought that Max was off his rocker, while the other half believed he was simply testing the water for a run at his fifth term as president in the wake of his tabloid scandal.

With the benefit of hindsight, however, it now seems like a missed opportunity.

Rather than drive the manufacturers forward to utilise the sport as a technological testing ground, to fulfil its raison d’etre, they have instead been plied with standardised components to reduce cost but which also reduce relevance.

In the current climate, therefore, Hyundai’s decision to stay and the WRC’s announcement this week was the best news possible. Now we have three seasons in which to see if and how that climate will change

It’s now possible for a manufacturer to compete in almost every major category of the sport without having to trouble itself with designing or building a single part of the car that carries their name. We are told that standardised technology reduces costs, keeps manufacturers involved and potentially encourages more to follow, although examples of where that has actually happened in the past 15 years are thin on the ground.

Formula E managed to do it for a while, primarily because it was cheap and gave the manufacturers a green platform. But with its growth stalled at roughly 10% of the WRC’s audience, those manufacturers are starting to seep away again.

PLUS: Why BMW and Audi have pulled the plug on Formula E

In the current climate, therefore, Hyundai’s decision to stay and the WRC’s announcement this week was the best news possible. Now we have three seasons in which to see if and how that climate will change.

Oliver Solberg, Sebastian Marshall, Hyundai 2C Competition Hyundai I20 Coupé WRC

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images