The Finnish rally car rental team Printsport is now taking a step forward and broading their range of rally cars. The team are seen all over the world with Rally2 cars and with a wide range of different models in the Finnish Ralli-SM rally championship. Now they have announced to get into the Rally3 class and will buy the brand-new Ford Fiesta.
The new entry-level class for four-wheel-drive, which is a step between the two-wheel-drive Rally4 and the more expensive four-wheel-drive Rally2 will be possible to rent from May at the Finnish company. The first major rounds that the team’s new car can be rented at is offered for the Portuguese FIA World Rally Championship round.
Usually it is the Skoda Fabia R5 and Volkswagen Polo R5 that apply to the team, but now they are also picking up M-Sport’s latest car for the brand-new class which will be the Junior WRC for next season will.
The Finnish team expects that for national events, it will be possible to reduce the competition cost down by 50% with the new Fiesta Rally3 compared to the Rally2 cars. Something that makes the class interesting both nationally and internationally.
More car manufacturers are also working on cars for the class, because of the cars are Rally4 classed but with four-wheel-drive and on the outside more air intake on the hood, a real roof scoop and a larger wing at the rear. The price for this type of machinery is about 100,000 euros included VAT from M-Sport.
The new Fiesta Rally3 has been developed and built by M-Sport Poland, the company that already controlls the Fiesta Rally4 manufacturing and the Junior WRC class operations. A lot of development and testing has preceded the car that made its debut during winter in Finland where the JWRC driver Ken Torn from Estonia drove the car.
Torn has been one of many in the line of test drivers during the development where Nil Solans, Kajetan Kajetanowicz, Matthew Wilson, Egon Kaur and last year’s JWRC champion Tom Kristensson did many miles in the car. Kristensson will be doing the car’s second rally event when he enters the Rally Sanremo next weekend to show off the car on asphalt.
When the car model enters as the main class in the Junior FIA European Rally Championship series, it gave high pressure at M-Sport, 21 cars were in operation a few weeks ago, most of which have already been delivered to customers. M-Sport’s hope is that at least 20 cars will have been delivered to the ERC season-opener to give those who want the chance to compete if the order was made on time.