World Rally Championship teams have expressed their thoughts regarding the possibility of a last-minute change to remove hybrid power from Rally1 cars for next season.

It appears there is a strong chance the FIA could decide to abandon hybrid power from the WRC’s top-flight class in a move that has been triggered by a mid-season change to the hybrid unit user guide from control supplier Compact Dynamics.

This is the latest in a long-running saga over the 2025 WRC regulations.The FIA’s working group, formed to “evaluate and recommend the future direction of rallying, proposed to remove hybrid power as part of raft of changes for 2025 in February this year.

However, WRC teams pushed back against the changes, resulting in the current Rally1 regulations staying put for 2025 and 2026 in what was seen as a U-turn from the FIA.

As previously reported, Compact Dynamics’ new safety guidelines stipulate that if the 130kW hybrid unit suffers three shock errors over 15G or one over 25G, it has to be stripped apart and sent back to the supplier for a full repair that can take months to complete.

Teams believe the change brought in at the Acropolis Rally Greece in September will significantly raise hybrid unit repair costs, with one team arguing it would no longer be financially viable.

An FIA e-vote has since been held where teams have expressed their thoughts as to whether hybrid power should continue next year. A decision is yet to be made. 

M-Sport-Ford team principal Richard Millener says the “extreme costs” now involved to run the hybrid units has made it no longer feasible for the Ford squad next year.    

“I think I would still like it [hybrid] in terms of what it is about, and what we are trying to push in terms of a championship with hybrid technology is still important,” Millener told Motorsport.com. 

“But sadly, with the rules that we have regarding the safety of the units and how they have to be repaired after a shock, with extreme costs to repair them, and that’s not feasible for us. 

Kalle Rovanperä, Jonne Halttunen, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota GR Yaris Rally1

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“It is not a request to remove it for what it is, it is a request to remove it because we can’t actually repair and run them at an economic price for M-Sport. We are talking a few extra million euro to do it and that is not something we can deal with. 

“It is not good, that image [of constant rule changes] from the outside and I have said before we need to have a strong leadership and a strong image of where we are going and we are struggling with that and we need to improve it.

“People will skew the reason and I’m sure people will blame the teams and some people will blame the FIA, but the supplier is not able to give us the product in the way we need it to work for us.”

Toyota is hopeful a sensible solution can be found but has questioned if hybrid power is still required moving forward.

“It’s not an ideal situation for sure,” Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala told Motorsport.com. “We don’t want expenses to go higher and we want to keep things simple, and if it is getting too complicated the the question is do we really need them [hybrid units]? 

“I think performance-wise the cars are pretty good even without it. But it shouldn’t get too difficult for the teams and if there is a risk that teams cannot be in the World Rally Championship because they are running out of units, then it shouldn’t be that way. 

“It is difficult as running these units and if they have an impact they need to be fixed and that takes time, so we need to find a sensible solution. At the end of the day if it is too difficult then it is easier to go without.”  

Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai World Rally Team Hyundai i20 N Rally1

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Hyundai has been vocal in its support of hybrid power previously this year but even its team principal Cyril Abitebeoul admitted that if would accept a change if it helped ensure the future of its competitors in the WRC.

“My thoughts are that electrification is the direction that the world is taking. We know that it’s an ongoing trend and therefore we are still supportive of electrifying motorsport electrifying WRC,” Abiteboul told Motorsport.com. 

“We will never actively or proactively request to remove the hybrid from WRC. Having said that, we also need to be pragmatic and recognise the fact that the WRC community is a small community and as any small community, we need to look after one another.

“So if there is any steps that must be taken in order to guarantee participants and competitors at the events we will accept to take those steps. We don’t want to be selfish. I don’t think that anyone can afford to be selfish in the current situation of WRC.

“One thing we must have is a decision very quickly. We are in the process of ordering parts, not the hybrid themselves, because that’s been done already since a while.

“If hybrid was to be removed, I think that’s something we will want to know as quickly as possible to avoid the [un]necessary cost.”

Pedro Acosta has voiced the commonly-held paddock belief that Ducati would prefer factory rider Francesco Bagnaia to win this year’s MotoGP world championship over Aprilia-bound Pramac man Jorge Martin.

Acosta made the remark as he reflected on a stunt engineered by MotoGP promoters, in which KTM’s 20-year-old rookie asked a question at the pre-weekend press conference featuring the two title protagonists.

His question (via video) tackled the possibility of favouritism for either rider on the part of the Italian factory.

Acosta’s invitation to contribute the press conference question; “Will the manufacturer influence this championship battle?” –  his exact wording – was the result of his remark a few weeks earlier that press conferences between Pramac’s Martin and factory rider Bagnaia lacked “spice”.

To his credit, Acosta did earn two significantly different responses from the friendly rivals, who go into the Australia weekend split by just 10 points with Martin in front.

Adamant there would be no preferential treatment, Bagnaia said: “If Ducati wanted to help me in some way, then I could have had something better than [our current package] at Misano already.

“We tried a new chassis, but it’s not ready for everybody so we’re not using it. It’s more correct like this.

“I think Gigi [Dall’Igna] was always clear on that, ever since I started riding for Ducati and even more in the last two seasons, the factory teams have the same package.

“If I have something new, everybody has something new. I don’t believe we’ll change anything until Valencia.”

Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing, Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Martin, on the other hand, dodged taking a clear position on the question.

“For sure I hope not!” he said. “But I’ll focus on what I can control: riding at 100% and trying to be fast.

“I understand why people ask this question. If they ask it, it’s because they’re thinking about it! But I cannot control that so I won’t focus on that. I will focus on riding.”

Acosta was underwhelmed with the results of his brief flirtation with journalism.

“I found the answers a bit bland,” he told the working media. “But it’s normal, they have contracts that tie their hands a bit, especially Pecco.”

After a little equivocation, Acosta was happy to give his thoughts on the matter.

“I don’t have an opinion on the subject, I’m [just voicing] popular opinion. [But] I think it would hurt [Ducati] a lot if Martin took the title to another factory.”

Asked in his own press conference whether he thought Martin or Bagnaia was the favourite for the title, Acosta replied that his money would be on Martin.

Max Verstappen says McLaren’s Oscar Piastri is “too good” to be asked to support Lando Norris, and says he would have never agreed to it.

As the 2024 F1 season has progressed, McLaren has become the team to beat over the summer, challenging Red Bull for the constructors’ title.

The Woking outfit has since taken a points lead on Red Bull, while Norris has a chance to topple the Dutchman in the drivers’ standings as well, heading into the final run of six races with a 52-point deficit.

And while McLaren is sticking to its general approach of having two equal drivers, the growing realisation that Norris could yet clinch his maiden world title has made the team decide last month to give the Briton priority whenever the on-track situation calls for it.

When asked for his views on McLaren’s team orders in an interview with Motorsport.com, Verstappen said Piastri was “too good” to play a supporting role and shouldn’t have accepted it, although the world champion admitted he has never been in a similar position.

“For me, he’s definitely not a [number two driver] and if I was him I would never accept it,” Verstappen said.

“For me, it’s easy to talk, of course, because I’ve been in Formula 1 for 10 years and it’s Oscar’s second season, so it is always harder to put your foot down.

“But he’s just a great F1 driver who doesn’t deserve it to give up wins and positions and play second fiddle because he’s asked to.”

Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing, and Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 2nd position, congratulate each other in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Under its changed approach, McLaren would likely have reversed the positions in Monza when Piastri and Norris finished second and third respectively, but the team has always clarified it would not ask Piastri to give up race wins for Norris.

Norris has also stated he doesn’t want to be handed the championship on a silver platter.

“If a driver is doing better than me and performing, I need to do a better job, so I wouldn’t want to take that away from someone,” Norris said.

“I also don’t want to be given a championship. Yes, it would be great to have a championship, and on the short term you feel amazing, but I don’t think you’d be proud of that in the long run.

“I want to win it by beating Max, beating my competitors, and proving that I’m the best on track.”

Verstappen praised McLaren for its rapid rate of development over the past 18 months, and for how Norris and Piastri have proven a formidable combination.

Asked if the pair was the best driver line-up among Red Bull’s competitors, he replied: “Yes, because they are closely matched and because they are both quick.

“McLaren has really put the right people in the right place, people that were already working at the team.

“The people there aren’t all new hires, apart from people like [former Red Bull designer] Rob Marshall. But some staff have been given new roles, and you can see how quickly that can have an impact.”

Factory Mercedes driver Jules Gounon will make his DTM debut in this weekend’s final round at Hockenheim, replacing Luca Stolz at HRT.

Double Spa 24 Hours winner Gounon has been drafted into the #4 HRT Mercedes AMG GT3 at the last-minute after Stolz had to withdraw from the Hockenheim races due to health reasons.

No further information was provided about 29-year-old Stolz, who was due to see out his third full season with the team in the German GT3-based series.

A statement from HRT read: “Luca Stolz (GER) of Mercedes-AMG Team HRT has been forced to withdraw from this weekend’s DTM finale at Hockenheim for health reasons.

“The 29-year-old’s place in the #4 Mercedes-AMG GT3 will be taken by Jules Gounon (AND).

“The Haupt Racing Team thanks Jules for stepping in at short notice and wishes Luca a speedy recovery.”

Gounon brings with him a wealth of experience of GT racing, having won the Bathurst 12 Hour on three occasions and scored class victories in major IMSA SportsCar Championship enduros including Daytona 24 Hours and Petit Le Mans.

His illustrious CV includes two titles in GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup with Mercedes, as well as the 2017 GT Masters title at the wheel of a Corvette C7.

Luca Stolz, Mercedes-AMG Team HRT Mercedes-AMG GT3

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

This year has seen the second-generation driver expand his horizons into prototype racing, competing in three rounds of the World Endurance Championship with Alpine in the Hypercar class.

After making his first appearance in the DTM in Germany on 18-20 October, he will be back behind the wheel of the Alpine A424 LMDh in the Bahrain 8 Hours WEC finale on 2 November.

The HRT outfit he is joining in the DTM currently sits fifth in the teams’ standings, two spots behind fellow factory-supported Mercedes team Winward.

The squad’s best runner in the standings is Arjun Maini in eighth on 128 points, while Stolz is placed just one spot behind in ninth after scoring a first win of 2024 at the Sachsenring last month.

Both drivers are out of the championship fight, although another Mercedes driver Maro Engel (Winward) remains firmly in the hunt in third place, 20 points behind championship leader Mirko Bortolotti of SSR Lamborghini.

Engel’s team-mate Lucas Auer, the last remaining driver in the four-strong Mercedes roster, sits 12th in the drivers standings.

As the Formula 1 grid has got ever closer, detail differences have become more critical in the fight for wins.

One area that is getting increasing attention is tyre behaviour – and especially how to manage them over race stints better than your rivals.

Teams and drivers have quickly come to understand that there are some special tricks needed to master what Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz has labelled ‘Pirelli Magic.’

What he is referring to specifically is a trait that the current generation of tyres have – in that how they behave over a full race stint is entirely dependent on how they are treated in their first few laps out of the pits.

If you go too hard too early, the tyres can overheat and lose performance. But go too slow out of the pits for a nice gentle introduction, then you risk losing track position.

There was perhaps no greater example of this playing out than the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc’s tyres fell away in the closing stages after he had been forced to push hard early in the final stint as he battled with Oscar Piastri.

That late drama was in contrast to drivers like Sainz and George Russell, whose tyres came alive as they had gone easy on them initially.

As Sainz said about this dilemma between pushing hard or going easy: “It’s a very fine line, very tight method to apply.

“You have to play a bit of the Pirelli magic, depending on the track layout and tarmac, even the compounds, as some compounds are more sensitive to them than others.

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“You need to then put the strategy into perspective, evaluate if it’s going to pay off to do it now, or is the undercut/overcut too important to risk that introduction.

“You have so many things to consider during those first three laps of the stint: whether you want to spend your coins on those laps or you want to spend them later in the race.

“It’s very easy to misjudge, because you never know what’s going to happen in the future. And you might have wasted your coins in something that was not worth it.”

So what is really going on here to trigger this phenomenon?

The key element of this ‘Pirelli magic’ relates to tyre temperatures, and how that can be so heavily influenced by the introduction of fresh rubber.

As Pirelli’s head of F1 and car racing Mario Isola said: “It’s a matter of thermal behaviour of the compound.

“The transition between 70 degrees [which the tyres are warmed to in the blankets] and the running pressure is quite important because you modify the chemical links in the compound, and this can generate thermal degradation.

“If you introduce the tyre in a gentle way for the first couple of laps, you shock the tyre less, you stress the tyre less and you have less degradation.”

As the above graph shows, giving the tyre an easier introduction means the surface temperature does not spike, and that has long-term benefits for the more crucial carcass temp.

Isola added: “It’s mostly about the chemicals. If you put a lot of energy into the tyre and a lot of heat, then you modify your chemical links and this is generating more degradation.”

But while the theory of this ‘Pirelli magic’ is clear, actually being able to deliver it is not so straightforward, because it is not as simple as telling the driver to take it easy for the first laps out of the pits.

Isola added: “It’s not a matter of going slower, because sometimes you need to push a bit more to heat the front tyres.

“So it depends on the set-up of the car. It depends how much you want to protect the rear tyres. If you protect the rear tyres a lot, then you need to heat up the front tyres, so you need to push a bit more. If you slow down too much then the risk is that you don’t have the tyres ready.

“I’m sure it’s a challenge for the teams. They have engineers that are dedicated to understanding how the tyres work and how they can extract the peak performance from the tyres.

“I know that all the teams are instructing their drivers on how to do the out-lap in order to get the best from the tyres. They have the temperatures on the steering wheel, so they know how much they have to push and how much they have to back off in order to have the tyres ready when they want.”

Mario Isola, Racing Manager, Pirelli Motorsport, in the team principals Press Conference

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

It is little wonder that Haas devoted a lot of its running at the pre-season Bahrain test to focusing on this area of race performance.

Team boss Ayao Komatsu said: “For the first two days we thoroughly, thoroughly focused on that.

“That was both from the engineering side, defining how to manage it, and then drivers to execute it as well, and how to feel it.

“We wanted to know that if you do different management, this is the result of it in terms of tyre degradation. It was a team effort and we are still learning.”

But while the ‘Pirelli magic’ is a key focus for everyone now, Isola is clear on one thing: it has become relevant only because other areas of the cars are no longer making the difference.

“It is about how competitive the championship is right now,” he said. “The Pirelli magic is not Pirelli magic, as we are using the same compounds that we used last year when no one was talking about this.

“If you have a big advantage like Max [Verstappen] a few years ago, then you don’t really care if you are in the peak of grip or close to it.

“But if you have to fight for a position and you have three or four drivers within a tenth of a second, then you can understand how important it is to stay in the peak of the grip.”

It is also fair to say that the task is never-ending and getting the ‘Pirelli magic’ spot on one weekend is no guarantee you will get it right the next.

As Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough said: “That’s the balance between my tyre engineers, my strategy engineers, and my drivers that I am juggling the whole time. It’s different track to track, compound to compound.

“So that is what you’re trying to learn on a Friday. So we sort of go into Friday with a ‘Mr. Tyres wants this to happen’ and ‘Mr. Strategy wants this to happen’. What do we agree is the best plan? Then we try to do that…”

Local favourite Jack Miller believes any result is possible at this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, given the nature of the Phillip Island venue as well as the weather forecast.

“I think anything is realistic,” said the struggling factory KTM rider ahead of the race weekend, which takes place on a fast track seen as one of the best tests of pure rider ability on the calendar.

“As we have seen many a year here at the island, it’s one of those tracks where even if you are having some slight issues or whatever, you can mask it a little bit.”

This was a sentiment echoed by reigning world champion and reigning champion Francesco Bagnaia, who admitted it will be harder for the Ducatis to exert their advantage at the seaside circuit.

“This track is good for everybody,” said the factory Ducati rider. “The bike here makes less difference compared to other tracks because it’s very fast and it’s more difficult to make the difference. [It’s unlikely we will] see somebody opening up a gap.”

Jack Miller, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Despite growing up in the far friendlier climate of Queensland, Miller sees the cold rain and wind expected on Friday and Saturday as an additional opportunity to sneak an upset over the dominant Ducatis.

“It looks like the weather conditions are going to be iffy throughout at least Friday and Saturday,” said Miller. “And the less dry track time, the better for me.

“I feel like we always hit the ground running, but we’ve been struggling throughout the season to make progress from FP1.

“So the least amount of dry track time will help, because our speed is generally there from the get-go – it’s just how to make those micro-improvements through the weekend.

“Fingers crossed, we can get away to a solid weekend.”

Miller has battled with his KTM for much of the season, leaving Tech 3’s Pedro Acosta and occasionally Miller’s factory team-mate Brad Binder to lead the Austrian manufacturer’s challenge to Ducati.

Acosta secured a first pole position at the last round in Japan, but crashed out of both the sprint and the grand prix whilst in contention for a breakthrough win.

“There’s no hiding the fact that I’ve had my issues,” said Miller. “But the boys [Acosta and Binder] are doing a fantastic job being able to ride around it and still put the bike where it needs to be on Saturday and Sunday.”