Desperate times mean desperate measures, and the FIA World Rallycross Championship needed a certain level of reinvention to offer and better spectacle, and in order to boost grid numbers for the 2024 we will see internal combustion cars return to the grid as the RX1 cars will face off the electric RX1e models that are already competing.
World RX actually is following a trend that was accepted by the RallyX Nordic and the 5 Nations British RX Championship, which accept electric cars alongside the combustion supercars for quite a long time, which even include the RX1e spec. The internal combustion cars are expected to be racing with a sustainable fuel, a similar concept to the late iteration of the MJP Pantera RX6 from Titans RX and the upcoming FC2 car from FirstCorner, which will appear in RallyX Nordic and Nitrocross.
No more than 16 cars will be permitted in 2024 and part time rounds will be accepted on a race by race basis, which means that if the current teams on the grid return and ESMotorsport aligns for real, only seven slots will be available for prospective RX1 entries, which until this year had the Euro RX1 as the top level rallycross for them. This doesn’t take into account that Special ONE Racing actually fulfills their desire of returning to the championship after the fire incident that consumed their cars and the team equipment at Lydden Hill.
Exactly due to the Special ONE Racing incident, the 2023 season had two cancellations as the investigations were underway, with the ultimate decision for the overseas section of the calendar to race with the Zeroid X1 RX2e cars for all teams to complete the season, which gave another title to Johan Kristoffersson.
The event format also has an adjustment as the Superpole session gives way to predetermined grid positions to mitigate the effects of track evolution, and Hoosier takes over from Cooper Tires as the new tire supplier for the championship, which is the first tire supplier change since the start of the World RX in 2014.
PHOTO: Allinkl.com Münnich Motorsport
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