Bad news for the WRC

aidan_dunne

2005 will be the last season for Peugeot and Citroen in the World Rally Championship. They announced their withdrawal earlier today.

PSA to end WRC assault after 2005

Peugeot and Citroen have announced that they will no longer continue to compete in the World Rally Championship from the end of 2005. Their parent company has cited tough conditions in the car market as the reason for its withdrawal.

In a statement, the PSA Peugeot Citroen group said: “In five consecutive years of competition in the World Rally Championship, Peugeot and Citroën have won five manufacturers titles and three drivers titles. These results reflect the diligent, passionate determination of each marque, backed by a substantial financial commitment to motor sports competition.

"Due to tougher conditions in the car market, new opportunities in motorsports will be reviewed in 2005, with a view to enabling the Group to significantly cut its sports budgets Peugeot and Citroën will remain strongly committed to the World Rally Championship in 2005. However, PSA Peugeot Citroën has decided that the marques will no longer take part in the WRC beyond that date. At the appropriate time, Citroën Sport and Peugeot Sport will announce the sports in which they will participate after 2005."

(from www.wrc.com)

Now, with the WRC on shaky ground as it is regarding manufacturers, this certainly can't be good news for the championship. Ford have announced they are going to continue on in the WRC for another 4 years, and there's talk of a possible entry by Suzuki in 2006/2007, but that still only leaves 3 or 4 manufacturers (Ford, Subaru, Skoda and Suzuki, if they enter. Mitsubishi are still very undecided what to do) in the championship beyond 2006. Compared to just a few years ago when we had Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Seat, Skoda, Hyundai and Toyota all competing, the future of the WRC doesn't look great, does it?

Robbo

There's going to have to be some cost cutting. Imo, the first thing to go should be the trick diffs. They won't slow the cars down much if they go but they cost the earth to develop right (iirc, the main reason a new Mitsubishi wasn't competitive there 2-3 years ago was pretty much all down to the diffs being over elaborate and impossible to get right).

The calendar needs some pruning as well.

I don't think they need to go as far as banning turbos.

John R

aidan_dunne wrote:

Compared to just a few years ago when we had Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Seat, Skoda, Hyundai and Toyota all competing, the future of the WRC doesn't look great, does it?

Not all of those were competing together in any one year, AFAIR the most teams in any one year was six, maybe five if you discount those not competing the full calendar.

For most of the 1990s there was only four main manufacturers, as long as there are three or four competitive teams the series will remain healthy, there can be as many entrants as you like but unless there is some good competition at the front it is doomed to F1 style tedium.


TBH it seemed like insanity for both PSA companies to be competing the championship, especially with the high budgets and completely different packages they were running.

It is Ironic that the cost is why they are pulling out since it was them, particularly Peugeot that sent the costs spiralling with their 4 and 5 cars per rally antics. I have to say I enjoyed Peugeot's disasterous season this year immensely, I felt sorry for Gronholm but it was great fun watching Corrado Provera taken down a notch. Hopefully that was the last we will see of Freddy Loix, I don't think any amount of sponsorship pull will be enough for another team to sacrifice a car to mediocrity for next season.

The upping of rallys to try and package WRC with F1 for alternate weeks was a bad idea, nobody was crying out for more rallys.

I wonder will this mean Citroen scrapping the new (C4?) they were planning to introduce next year.


If they are competitive I would expect Mitsubishi to continue with the WRC for some time, if they were going to pull out it would have been last year.

John R

Robbo wrote:

There's going to have to be some cost cutting. Imo, the first thing to go should be the trick diffs. They won't slow the cars down much if they go but they cost the earth to develop right (iirc, the main reason a new Mitsubishi wasn't competitive there 2-3 years ago was pretty much all down to the diffs being over elaborate and impossible to get right).

The calendar needs some pruning as well.

I don't think they need to go as far as banning turbos.

If anything the Mitsubishi diffs were under-elaborate, they were a completely different design to the other teams and although they were cutting edge mid 90's they were outclassed in the last few years. They were also notoriously difficult to drive, almost nobody but Makkinen was able to get good performances out of them, that is why they were never popular as customer cars even when they were at the top.


Banning turbos would cost the teams a fortune. They all have well developed engines based on 4cyl 2litre engines, without turbos these would be completely useless for rallying and new larger engines would have to be built from scratch. The development cost of that would far outweigh the current engine improvement expenditure.