What’s going to be the best rally series you see next year? Hierarchically, you would have to say the World Rally Championship. It’s at the top of the tree after all: the juiciest lobster in the smorgasbord of four-wheeled entertainment put before us on an annual basis.
Sadly, that’s probably not going to be it though – despite the best efforts of the manufacturers and promoter.
OK, so how about the European Rally Championship? It’s been truly rejuvenated under the auspices of Eurosport, with the best TV package out there and a brilliant variety of events. Nice try, but the answer doesn’t even lie there.
So something else then – let’s clutch at a few straws. The Italian Rally Championship – of which we’ve long been fans? The French Rally Championship? Neither of those. How about the British Rally Championship? Sadly, that doesn’t even exist anymore – for now at least.
Then it has to be something historic, surely? The sight and sound of Group B cars has still never been equalled, 30 years after their heyday. So the European Historic Rally Championship: this must be the one must-see series, right, if you see nothing else in 2015?
Not exactly. No, the thing that we reckon nobody can afford to miss next year is the newly created FIA RGT Cup. It’s only five events; two from the WRC and three from the ERC – but they’re all very good events indeed. And the cars will be even better. The season starts in Monte Carlo, and then moves to Ypres, Deutschland, Valais and Corsica.
Any R-GT car with a valid technical passport can compete so expect to see plenty of Porsches. We don’t need to tell anyone how amazingly these cars drive and sound: Francois Delecour has already done that far more eloquently than anybody else. But it’s not just Porsches: expect to see Aston Martins (at least one ex-Prodrive Vantage rally car is still in existence) and anything else that anybody fancies building. There are so many tantalising possibilities out there.
Tuthill Porsche proved just how effectively you can make a rally car from a racing car, using an ex-Carrera Cup 997. It’s not going to be too long before somebody applies the same logic to the Ferrari Challenge – which uses 458 racing cars. Or even the Maserati Trofeo, which is for the Maserati GranTurismo.
We’ve not read the RGT rulebook in detail, and even if we did it’s bound to be ambiguous, in the way that many FIA regulations are.
But, if they were allowed, there would be two cars that we would start building to FIA RGT-spec right now. The first would be a decision ruled by the head, the second one by the heart.
The Lamborghini Gallardo, with its four-wheel drive system, is born for rallying and on the right event, in the right hands, could cause a serious upset. In the guise of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo, it’s billed as the fastest one-make racing series in the world – and you have to wonder whether all that speed could be carried over to rallying. Potentially, it could make a devastatingly effective weapon.
Depending on how mass-produced FIA RGT base models have to be, we would also see if we could obtain a technical passport for the Lister Bell STR. You might not have heard of it, but it’s a current car, produced in low volume in the United Kingdom.
Basically it’s a modern Lancia Stratos: just check out the photo above. Technical passport obtained, all that remains is to paint it in Alitalia colours and go rallying. Is anyone brave enough to try?
Story by: Anthony Peacock
Published by: Maxrally