Route Preview: Rally Italia Sardegna 2023

Rally Italia Sardegna celebrates its 20th occurence in WRC with a new route including a 50 km version of Monte Lerno. The base is again in Olbia, on the East coast. The shakedown and Sunday stages are familiar from 2021 while the super special is the same as last year. Other than that, all stages have some changes with one stage not driven since the first WRC edition – 19 years ago! The main characteristic of the rally is still the narrowness of the technical roads but this year there’s more Safari-style roughness than before.

Countries with multiple WRC locations

Over the 50 year history of WRC, the series has visited 35 countries, but already 16 of them have hosted multiple rallies on WRC level, or had their national WRC event in separate locations. Let’s look at them in greater detail.

Route Preview: Rally Portugal 2023

Rally Portugal is a classic WRC event with technical but relatively smooth and fast roads. Its route has remained quite unchanged in the recent years. This time there’s one half-new forest stage, one reversed one as wel as one new super special with also some shuffling of stages between Saturday and Sunday. In addition, three of the forest stages are single-run.

Route Preview: Croatia Rally 2023

The third time on Croatian fast and bumpy tarmac roads brings only marginal changes with one extended and one completely new stage. However, considering the tricky conditions in 2022, some stages could still be considered new. Last year the itinerary length was only 291 km long, but this year it’s above the 300 km minimum limit, but just barely.

April Fools: FIA Requests WRC stage titles translated into English

To make pronouncing of stage titles more accessible around the world, from 2023 Rally Estonia onwards all stage titles shall be translated into English. Safari and Japan have already experimented this with for example the stages Hell’s Gate and Shitara Town Reverse. So far, Rally Estonia and Rally Finland have published their newly translated stage […]

Long stages vs. Short stages

Long stages were a trend in rallying some years ago, although decades ago they were even banned! Nowadays it seems it’s increasingly rare to see a stage over 30 km, let alone over 40 km. What is affecting this and what benefits do we get from short or long stages?

Stage Repeats vs. Single Runs

For the last 10 years WRC has been run predominantly on repeated stages, with single run stages becoming increasingly rare (apart from short super specials). Why has this development happened and what are the pros and cons of each approach?

Rally Finland 2023 Route Revealed

Rally Finland organizers keep the fans surprised with route updates almost every year. The 2023 edition dusts off three stages and changes the power stage. The end result is a very fast rally, likely the fastest WRC event ever!

Route Preview: Rally Mexico 2023

Rally Mexico’s technical but smooth roads covered in loose gravel return to WRC after sitting out two seasons. The route is once again mostly unchanged, but there’s some interesting updates in the super specials, as well as some new sections that were left undriven in 2020 when COVID-19 cut the event one day short. The new Rally1 hybrid cars will face the high altitudes for the first time. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the tough conditions or how much will the performance increase from the support of the electric boost which doesn’t suffer in lower oxygen levels.

Route Preview: Rally Sweden 2023

Last year Rally Sweden relocated to Umeå to ensure more snowy conditions than in the thaw-stricken Värmland. Snow was present indeed, but the stages had a different character, alternating now between very fast and very narrow sections, involving long straights and occasional tight corners similarly to Arctic Rally of Finland. Last year’s stages were new for everyone but this year as much as 62% of the route is new. Like last year, problems with reindeers have made its changes on the itinerary.