The new technical regulations that will come into effect will radically change the nature of the championship. The current Rally1 cars will be replaced by cars that are technically much closer to today's Rally2 regulations. The aim of the new rules is to reduce costs, attract new manufacturers, and increase competition at the highest level of the championship. According to Toyota team principal Juha Kankkunen, this transition will not be smooth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we still have all the necessary arrangements in place. But next year will inevitably be a bit chaotic,\u201d said Kankkunen.<\/p>\n
Toyota is currently the only manufacturer developing an entirely new WRC27 car. However, Kankkunen believes the Japanese brand will not be immune to early-stage challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could say nobody\u2019s quite ready yet, so it\u2019s going to be pretty chaotic. I think things will settle down a lot by 2028, but we\u2019ll see. This reminds me a bit of those first years, from 1986 to 1987. It was a tremendous change,\u2019 Kankkunen recalled.<\/p>\n
The 1987 season witnessed one of the biggest turning points in WRC history. The flashy Group B cars were replaced by Group A machines following serious safety concerns.<\/p>\n
Henri Toivonen's fatal accident at the 1986 Corsica Rally accelerated this change, and the gap between the two generations of drivers was enormous.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe power dropped from around 500 horsepower to about 250, and the vehicles became roughly 400 kilograms heavier,\u2019 Kankkunen recalled.<\/p>\n
The extent of the change was immediately apparent during testing before the opening race of the 1987 season, the Monte Carlo Rally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still remember our first test with my cruising assistant Juha Piironen. We were testing on a snow-covered road for Monte Carlo. After the first kilometer, Juha told me, \u2018Put the gas pedal all the way down.\u2019 I told him my foot had been on the gas all the way from the beginning. That\u2019s when you realize you just have to get used to it gradually,\u201d Kankkunen said, laughing.<\/p>\n
However, he believes that next year's transition will not be as dramatic as it was nearly forty years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difference isn\u2019t actually that big. Moving away from the Rally1 car isn\u2019t as big a step as people think. Plus, a lot depends on the roads.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Rally Championship will enter a new era next season as the current Rally1 cars are replaced by new ones.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[773,772,743,111,583],"class_list":["post-1552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ralli","tag-group-b","tag-juha-kankkunen","tag-toyota-gazoo-racing","tag-wrc","tag-wrc27"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Juha-Kankkunen.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1555,"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions\/1555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenyok.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}