WRC27's first independent constructor says it must do 15 rounds in two years. The FIA's published rule says 50 per cent, then 100 per cent..
Lionel Hansen was asked on 15 August how much of the 2027 World Rally Championship his new constructor intends to contest. "Definitely, for next year, it will be only a few rounds, not the whole season, it's not possible," he told DirtFish. "But a few rounds, like five, for example. We must do 15 rounds in two years. That's the main goal in two years."
The World Motor Sport Council wrote the requirement down in Tashkent eight months earlier, and it does not say fifteen. The FIA's published summary of the 10 December 2025 decisions reads: "participation requirements have been introduced so that a homologated car must contest at least fifty per cent of WRC events in its first year with a minimum of two cars per rally, increasing to full participation across all events from the second year."
Fifty per cent of the 14-round 2026 calendar is seven. Hansen's number is five, and it comes with a second car that only exists if a decision on 1 November goes his way.
Nobody can check the arithmetic
There is no published 2027 calendar. The FIA's WRC regulations library carries the 2026 Sporting Regulations, dated 13 January 2026, as its most recent document; a 2027 sporting regulation and a WRC27 homologation regulation are not in it, retrieved 19 August. So the actual 2027 obligation depends on a round count nobody outside the FIA has, and the requirement itself has been read publicly only through a press release.
Hansen's fifteen is reconcilable if 2027 runs ten rounds, which would put five at exactly half and ten at all of them. That is arithmetic, not reporting, and no source supports a ten-round 2027 season. Against this year's fourteen the same rule produces seven plus fourteen, which is twenty-one.
DirtFish itself applied the rule to RallyOne correctly in June, writing that "the 2027 regulations stipulate a constructor like RallyOne Project must compete on 50% of the World Rally Championship rounds in its first season". Two months later the constructor's own project leader described a different obligation, in his own words, and nobody put the two side by side. The gap is not a gotcha. It is a measure of how little of the regulation the people building cars to it can currently read.
The programme has been shrinking since December
Announcing Project Rally One on 17 December 2025, the FIA said the car "will begin a comprehensive development campaign, including more than 6,000 km of gravel and asphalt testing ahead of its homologation, with the first shakedown scheduled for spring of 2026."
Spring passed. In June, DirtFish reported first validation tests scheduled for August. On 15 August the first chassis was in build, the roll-out had moved to the start of September in France, and the testing target for the decisive window had become "2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) of testing before the end of October". Six asphalt tests are planned inside that window. Homologation is targeted for 1 January.
Hansen is candid about why. "The process we have for homologation is, of course, the same for a constructor, a tuner, like is as it is for a manufacturer," he said. "But, for us, we have much less people. Even if we are very motivated, it's not so easy." The team is seventeen strong. The engine is currently "largely a Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 unit" with an own-homologation alternative Hansen puts at "the middle of next year". The transmission is in house with a chosen supplier. The tarmac suspension is defined. Gravel suspension, he says, "is still a work in progress", which for a rally car is a substantial admission in mid-August.
The date that governs everything is 1 November, described as "the crossing point to decide on Monte". Chassis two would then be built in November and chassis three in December, to reach the two cars per rally the FIA requires. Hansen's realistic floor is lower than his target: "If we have no reliability problem at the end of October, I think we can be confident to have minimum one car and maximum two in Monte Carlo."
More than twenty P1 and P2 drivers have been approached, "including some in the service park". No customer car is available before the middle of 2027.
What the top class actually looks like for 2027
Toyota is the only current top-class competitor building a new WRC27 car. Richard Millener said so plainly in June, from a rival's chair: "It's clear that only Toyota have a new car for next year at the moment." Ott Tanak has been developing it since 17 April, and his read on the formula is not a sales pitch. "We know it's going to be a very, very big challenge to beat the Rally2 cars. It's a big job."
M-Sport is taking the other route the World Motor Sport Council opened in Macau on 23 June. The Rally2-WRC-Kit is a set of homologated front fenders, a front bumper and a rear aerodynamic device, capped at 7,500 euros, fitted to a Rally2 car homologated before 31 December 2026, running to a total weight of 1220kg. It buys a Ford Fiesta Rally2 a place alongside WRC27 cars for two seasons and no longer: eligibility "will end on 31 December 2028". Millener has said M-Sport wants a new car of its own, but only for 2028.
The Kit carries a heavier participation obligation than the new cars do. Its homologation "may only be carried out by a manufacturer registered for the FIA World Rally Championship as a constructor", and "during the first year of homologation, the Manufacturer must participate in 100 per cent of the events listed on the WRC calendar, with a minimum of two cars per rally". The cheap route into the top class demands the full season from day one; the expensive route allows half of it.
Hyundai has committed to neither. It is updating the i20 N Rally2 and, per DirtFish's reporting on 17 August, "is not expected to develop a Kit meaning it will not be eligible for next year's constructors' championship". That is an expectation, not a Hyundai statement, and the second half of it is DirtFish's inference rather than a rule the FIA has published. Nothing in the Macau text bars an unkitted Rally2 car from the constructors' championship; it only conditions Kit homologation. Cyril Abiteboul's last on-record position, from December 2025, is a non-commitment with a named obstacle. "We still do not have an engine that can qualify with the regulation, as you know it has to be a production-based powertrain," he told Autosport, distinguishing it from the unit in the current Rally1 car, and adding that the FIA is aware of the problem.
Behind those three sits WRT Rally1 Spain by RMC-RFEDA, confirmed on 23 April as the second new constructor and the first WRC entry actively supported by an FIA member club. It has published nothing since, which is silence rather than news.
The driver who wants the manufacturers back
Thierry Neuville is unsigned for 2027 and is not among the twenty-plus drivers interested in Hansen's car. His stated priority is the manufacturer that has committed to nothing. "Today my clear focus is to stay with Hyundai and it's my priority number one," he said on 17 August. "Also keep Hyundai in the game because the championship needs manufacturers like Hyundai."
Then he says the part that lands against the whole WRC27 case. "It's good to see projects like Lionel's ones but I think that overall the championship needs real manufacturers, people with the budget to support also the new promoters and make the championship great again and therefore you need some money. And I'm not sure the tuners currently have the opportunity to do that."
The FIA's founding announcement of Project Rally One said the framework "opens homologation to independent Tuners such as Project Rally One, allowing them to compete on equal terms with OEMs". Malcolm Wilson's Macau statement makes the same case for the Kit: the changes "will support larger fields, increase competitive depth and help deliver a fantastic contest at the highest level of rallying". Neuville, four days before he named Hyundai as his priority, called the 2027 machinery "a step back", adding "nobody wants to take a step back, but sometimes it's a choice of choices, basically".
The championship changed hands in the middle of this
WRC Promoter's takeover by Cosmobolis was confirmed on the Friday of Rally Finland, 31 July, with Eric Boullier as CEO and Julien Vial as COO. Neuville, who dates his own first public complaint about the promoter to Rally Portugal in 2018, backs them: "I trust the guys who are in charge because I know what they did in the past and I'm very confident they can do the job." Neither Boullier nor Vial has publicly set out a plan.
They inherit a top class that currently reads as one new car, one aero kit, one manufacturer waiting on an engine it does not have, and two independent constructors, the further along of which has moved its first test from spring to September, cut its pre-homologation testing target from more than 6,000km to 2,000km, and told a reporter it will do about five rounds against a published rule requiring half a calendar nobody has seen.
Toyota leads the 2026 manufacturers' table on 514 points to Hyundai's 340 after ten of fourteen rounds, with M-Sport Ford fourth on 130 behind Toyota's second entry. Round eleven, Rally del Paraguay, runs 27 to 30 August. The 1 November decision on whether RallyOne starts Monte Carlo falls between the last round of this season and the first of the one the rules were written for.