After problems with the hybrid units during the FIA World Rally Championship at Rally Sweden, the FIA has announced they will be changing the rules ahead of the Rally Croatia.
The rule is coming in place because of the incident where Ott Tänak was forced to retire in Sweden due to a failure with the hybrid unit despite having a functioning car, this change hopes to stop this from happening again.
Tänak was second overall after stage 5, but before the stage 6 the Estonian had to retire since the indicator lights on his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 flashed red. The car worked but the hybrid system indicated a fault, something that automatically forces a driver to retire.
The cause of the error was not caused by external abuse, the hybrid units are manufactured by Compact Dynamics and are also not allowed to be touched by the teams.
As Tänak retired and had to miss the two remaining stages it cost him 20 minutes in penalties and without a chance to score any points.
After some discussions with the teams, a rule change has now taken place, instead of 10 minutes, the drivers will be given 2 minutes per missed stage if the error is due to the hybrid unit.
Along with this rule change, the FIA has confirmed to the teams that there will be an increase the number of test days during the season in order to refine the new Rally1 cars.
