2017 has been the year of M-Sport, a fan-favorite World Rally Championship team that’s currently beating big-budget factory rally efforts from Toyota, Citroën and Hyundai. But Ford won’t make M-Sport a full works team despite all its success, and now one of M-Sport’s most loyal drivers is leaving.
If you thought Block was done with Ford when Hoonigan pulled out of World Rallycross, oh no. Ford’s not going to give up that PR-and-tire-smoke machine that easily. Now we finally know what Block’s future plans involve: one of the most insane cars of all time: a 1991 Ford Escort Cosworth Group A rally car.
New Zealander Hayden Paddon may have been out of a World Rally Championship drive in Spain, but he can certainly whip around his Hyundai i20 AP4+ back at home. He’s been showcasing his talent and his home country in these breathtakingly gorgeous Paddon’s Playground videos, all of which rule.
With Ford pulling out of World Rallycross, that leaves one big question up in the air: are they going to put that money somewhere else? To me, there’s only one answer: Ford needs to make M-Sport its World Rally Championship works team before they lose the WRC’s second most successful driver ever: Sébstien Ogier.
The craziest jump in rally is a big statement. You have the famous jumps in Finland. El Brinco in Mexico. WRC Sweden has an award named ‘Colin’s Crest’ for the longest jump on SS16. These are massive jumps, but they aren’t the largest or the craziest.
Rally Poland, the second oldest stage rally in the world, just lost its spot on the World Rally Championship calendar, reports Motorsport.com. The rally had issues with spectator safety for four years in a row, so the WRC will not renew their contract with Rally Poland that ends this year.
The World Rally Championship’s Rallye Deutschland is a ridiculously fast blast through the German countryside, mostly on tarmac. There’s nothing more satisfying than watching these cars bounce around on landing but still somehow—somehow!—keep it under control. Behold, flat-out driving at its craziest.
One corner at Rally Finland last weekend seemed committed to catching out and rolling as many cars as possible. (Count 10 rolls and five other crashes.) But the rally fans watching from the side of the road had other plans.
Watch this video and you’ll understand why people lose their minds over Rally Finland. I could tell you it’s the fastest event on the World Rally Championship calendar, but that wouldn’t explain it in the way that a car flying sideways through the air set up for another flat out corner does.
The consistently fastest event in the World Rally Championship is Rally Finland, beloved as much for its huge speeds as for its car-launching crests and jumps. Here’s the gnarliest one of the weekend.
Back in 2012, Americans Chris Duplessis and Alex Kihurani made it to Finland to run the round of the World Rally Championship. To everyone in the U.S. rally community, it felt like a victory in and of itself. Watch this video and understand why.
There’s plenty of racing this weekend, but sadly, not enough of it is on dirt. If you can’t wait for more dirt, this completely ridiculous highlight reel from Rally Poland should suffice.
The World Rally Championship visited Sardinia earlier this month, a rough, high-flying event that ate at least one drone. Here’s the (non-crashing) footage that made one drone’s demise worth it, at least in my eyes.
Drones produce some cool aerial footage, but there’s a good reason why most racing events tell you to leave them at home. This is what happens when one flies directly into a car’s path on a World Rally Championship stage. It doesn’t end well for the drone.
The Subaru Impreza WRC97 driven by rally legend Colin McRae in preparation for the 1997 FIA World Rally Championship season went up for auction recently and, as expected, commanded a pretty legendary price.
One of the biggest travesties of the Volkswagen World Rally Championship team shutting down was that it left its very last rally winner, Andreas Mikkelsen, without a ride for 2017. His more experienced teammates Sébastien Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala easily landed on other teams, but Mikkelsen was out of top-level…
It’s the ultimate Volkswagen teammate grudge match: mano a mano, car versus car. Ex-teammates Sébastien Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala battled it out side by side on the first super special stage of Rally Portugal.
Sometimes I think that rally teams should be the only ones allowed to touch my car. If you want something fixed fast and right, you probably need Kris Meeke’s crew from the Citroën team. Meeke’s car looked like a write-off after a crash, yet it was back up and ready to race in just three hours.
Rally Mexico had one of the most incredible ends to a rally ever, with Citroën World Rally Championship driver Kris Meeke winning the rally despite flying off the road for a detour through a spectator parking lot. Now Citröen has remixed the video to offer several funny explanations for that detour.
World Rally Championship fan Jiří Tureček happened to be in the right place at the right time after Toyota driver Juho Hänninen hit a bridge near the end of Stage 1 of this weekend’s Tour de Corse. The hard hit caused fuel to leak out, which sparked a weirdly mesmerizing fire when viewed in slow motion.
