The World Rally Championship's Rally1 class will make its final appearance at Rally Sardinia this weekend, bringing down the curtain on four years of the most extreme rally cars the sport has ever seen. From 2027, the series will adopt a new formula built around less powerful engines and a spec tubular chassis, a move designed to cut the costs that made Rally1 unsustainable.
Introduced in 2022, Rally1 machines were spaceframe constructions powered by 1.6-litre turbocharged engines, initially with hybrid powertrains. Freed from the homologation rules that constrained the World Rally Cars they replaced, they were, by most measures, the fastest cars ever to tackle a rally stage. That performance came at a price. The category proved hugely expensive to run, and after just four years the championship has decided to abandon it.
The contrast with what follows will be stark. The WRC2027 cars will feature less powerful engines and a standardised tubular chassis, prioritising cost control over outright speed. For teams and manufacturers, the change is a financial necessity. For purists, it marks the end of an era in which rallying's top class pushed engineering and expenditure to their limits.
A taste of what will be lost came at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year, when this correspondent rode in a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 driven by Jari-Matti Latvala, an 18-time WRC event winner. From the co-driver's seat, the interior is almost unrecognisable compared with the road car. Vision is blocked by the wings of a tight bucket seat, a taut harness restricts movement, and the cabin is stripped of nearly everything familiar, leaving only a ghostly outline where the road car's dashboard once sat.
From the outside, the transformation is just as dramatic. At thirty feet the car could pass for a road-going Yaris, but up close the pumped-out arches make it seem impossibly wide, and a gigantic split-level rear wing dominates the rear. Under the bonnet, the 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine sits deep in the chassis, surrounded by gold heat shielding and 3D-printed components. Minimum weight is just 1,180kg, and this particular car produces over 365bhp through a regulation five-speed gearbox, giving a power-to-weight ratio of roughly 309bhp per tonne, comparable to a BMW M8 Competition.
On the stage, the experience is visceral. The engine fires with a high idle that sounds more like a chainsaw than a car, loud enough that only the helmet intercom allows Latvala's voice to be heard. «Some bits are very slippery,» the Finn observes calmly, describing a Hannu Mikola-designed route laid on concrete and covered with a thin layer of loose gravel that wears away over the four days of the festival.
With ten seconds to go, Latvala engages the first stage of the anti-lag system, igniting the fuel-air mixture in the exhaust manifold and setting off a stream of assault-rifle bangs as the turbo spools up. Five seconds later the revs rise further, filling the cabin with one of the most aggressive noises imaginable. The launch is brutal: all four wheels fight for traction on the tarmac, the nose pitches skywards, and the car rockets away.
Through a narrow, hay bale-lined left-hander, the softly sprung suspension tips the right-hand side down as the car slides. The anti-lag pops and bangs beneath a canopy of leaves on a route scarcely wide enough for the car. Latvala keeps his right foot planted through the fast sweepers, and the grip on the less-than-ideal surface defies belief. Understeer appears foreign to the Yaris: the front end grips like a vice and the rear follows, the car often facing the corner exit almost as soon as it enters.
Latvala's inputs are hypnotic. His left hand never leaves the alcantara steering wheel rim, his right works the gearstick and handbrake, and his legs stay eerily still. Into a sharp right-hander, the rear mounts the bank slightly as he uses all of the road and a little more, then plants the throttle so the mechanical differentials pull the car through, fishtailing before straightening up. The brakes are equally astonishing, the nose pitching down as calipers clamp 300mm discs and slow the car at a rate that would impress on tarmac.
A jump approaches and Latvala does not lift. The car flies almost 50 feet before 270mm of suspension travel drops it back to earth with less of a thump than a pothole at 20mph. The final corners pass in a blur of turbo chirps, and then the finish line arrives. It is a demonstration of why Rally1 cars will be missed, and why the championship has chosen to move on.