It's less than a week to go for an entirely new era on the World Rally stage.
2022 heralds the start of the hybrid motor with teams moving towards a more sustainable method or racing.
Change
The new hybrid cars blend a 100kW electric motor with a competition-proven 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engine, which has powered the sport’s top-tier cars since 2011. The package raises peak performance levels to more than 500bhp whilst also reducing harmful emissions.
FIA President Ben Sulayem, a former WRC competitor himself, said “Beside the hybrid technology adding a new dynamic layer of performance combined with safety improvements, Rally1 cars will be using 100 percent sustainable fuel and work is also ongoing to achieve greater sustainability in the organisation of each round of the series. I look forward to an exciting season.”
Irish Interests
For Irish rally fans, it's set up to be a major year.
Waterford native Craig Breen and his co-driver Paul Nagle will head up the Ford M-Sport team as they face into the new challenge of hybrid rallying.
For Breen, who has spent three years with Hyundai, he has now been given the chance as lead driver by M-Sport Team Principal Richard Millener.
Monte Carlo will be the first outing for the pair with racing in the principality from Thursday 20th - Sunday 23rd January on their season opener.
This will be their chariot for the coming year, with Ford now competing on the WRC stage for their 25th year.
M - Sport Ford Puma Hybrid Rally1 car seen during the WRC launch at the Hangar 7 in Salzburg, Austria on January 15, 2022.
The car is described as having "vibrant shades of purple with the team’s traditional blue palette, marks the change to hybrid with glowing bolts of colour over the body of the car. As the World Rally Championship enters this radical period of change and M-Sport celebrates its landmark anniversary, the team is taking the opportunity to signify the importance of the direction the sport is taking in the 2022 season."
The year to come
Once Monte Carlo is done and dusted, it's time to embark on a journey that will see drivers travel to the four corners of the globe. Countries such as Japan, Kenya, Greece and Portugal make up the list.
Breen has previously gone well in several of these locations - standing on the podium twice in Estonia, twice in Finland and once in Belgium.
All those achievements were pulled off as he filled the role of an optional driver for the Korean carmaker. This year, we can expect to see something vastly different as he heads up the team from Cumbria.
Will 2022 be the year that we see Breen stand on the top step of a podium at the highest level of rallying? The odds look pretty good at this stage.
