Next weekend the FIA World Rally Championship will be decided at ACI Rally Monza which will be run with an exciting entry list that was announced earlier this week.
For this year’s COVID-19 hit season, only five new WRC cars have been manufactured by the three teams with Toyota Gazoo Racing making the most with three in total during 2020.
The remaining two come from Hyundai Motorsport, which like Toyota has had four cars in most rallies. M-Sport Ford meanwhile built it’s latest chassis in September 2019 which incidentally caught fire in Mexico this year in the hands of Esapekka Lappi.
Interestingly, M-Sport has only 12 built cars in total since the current WRC regulations came into force in 2017, of which only five remain in operation with the team.
Of the 12 manufactured, the first test car has not competed in an actual event, one burned to the ground in connection with Rally Mexico this year as mentioned above and five of the cars have been sold to private customers.
Lorenzo Bertelli owns one of the cars while another is in the hands of Ott Tänak’s team OT Racing and is driven by Georg Gross. Finnish team JanPro Racing owns one car as does the Frenchman Armando Pereira and the final chassis has been sold to Italian team R + Sport.
Only the Hyundai NG i20 WRC has been produced in recent seasons in fewer numbers, but this was due to the team only using the car for a single season before the 2017 regulations began. Even the Seat Cordoba WRC and Suzuki SX4 WRC, which appeared both in only a few events, were produced in higher numbers.
