With some other cars of the Rally2 group (entries for the WRC2 and WRC2 Challenger supporting championships), in a Cargo Flight from Qatar Airways, all of the 10 cars from the 3 constructors, arrived to our country to start a “last dance tour” since the Rally1 will be replaced at the end of the year for the new WRC27 Regulations, but for now, let’s just focus on what’s going on now.
“For real? There’s cars inside?”
Absolutely yes, and teres a logic explanation. Compared to the next classes, we can think about the Rally1 as “High-end tech Legos”. These cars are built around a FIA-Homologated Safety Cell instead being mass production-derived cars, then, the panels and every other component could be transported separately to optimize cargo space.
On the left, a packed Rally1 car as transported / On the right: a fully mounted Ford Puma Rally1
“Ain’t still understanding. What’s a Rally1 Car?
It deserves a proper intro with context for those who enter to our web looking for proper info about the top-tier cars in the FIA World Rally Championship. If you’re a motorsport fan and you don’t know how to explain to other people, this article will help you.
Rally1 are the top-tier cars in the FIA Rally Pyramid established in 2020 (we will talk about other classes in a next article, for now, we’ll still talking about the major ones). They debuted in 2022 as a replacement for the third and last generation of World Rally Cars in a big jump to a hybrid era that was discontinued in 2024, and keeping only the internal combustion engines.
Rally1 engines aren’t even related with their homologation production models. Those are built under the “Global Race Engine” architecture, running since 2012, but with the power output upgrade introduced in 2017. Those GRE’s have a inline 4-cylinder block, 1.6 liters of capacity with a turbocharger and a 35 mm. air restrictor.
The max power is around 380 horsepower and the top speed, limited for safety reasons, is 200 kilometers per hour (125 miles per hour), putting the Rally1 cars as the fastest ones in the sport.
Once fully unloaded, mounted and set up in Encarnación’s Sambódromo, from August 28 to 30, they’ll fight during the 356 kilometers of special stages in this rally, starting a “last season tour” for the World Rally Championship title fight. The Best WRC Event of 2025 stills in the way to a bigger party that will have hundreds of thousands people from around the world.
