Depending on who you believe, the World Rally Championship is either in crisis mode, or everything is going along just swimmingly.
Not long after the news that Citroen had withdrawn their two-car team from the series came a further blow, with WRC2 giant, Skoda Motorsport, also pulling the pin on their factory involvement.
Citroen claimed that Sebastien Ogier’s defection to rival Toyota left them without the option of a ‘top level’ driver for next season.
Similarly, Skoda revealed that with young gun Kalle Rovanpera heading to Toyota, it faced a similar dilemma.
“We have no one to replace him. Oliver Solberg could be an option for someone to support, but not in a factory team,” Skoda’s Pavel Hortek said recently.
“We have sold 328 cars and we have many customers, we don’t have the capacity to maintain all that and also an official team. Having lost great drivers has been key.”
In some ways, Skoda’s official reason seems like a contradiction. On the one hand, the success of the factory team has enabled them to sell 328 R5 Fabias.
Yet here they are claiming that they don’t have the resources to maintain it all.
Some, looking into their own crystal balls, reckon that the Czech make has pulled the pin now so that either themselves, or their host company, Volkswagen, can return to the WRC when the new hybrid rules are introduced in 2022.
Whether that’s the case or not, it doesn’t reflect the WRC in a positive way just at the moment.
There’s no doubt that the current specification of World Rally Cars introduced for the 2017 season has provided more excitement for fans, and close competition across the board.
However, the cars are still not able to be run by privateers, meaning for privately-run teams like M-Sport, there is no customer market that can further feather the nest of their own teams.
Hyundai, Toyota and Citroen, despite being manufacturer teams, are in the same boat. There’s simply no market for ex-works cars at present.
The WRC has become a victim of itself. It’s a successful championship that’s hugely successful the world over, but with no factory cars filtering down through the ranks, they’ve essentially killed off their own potential for growth.
Which makes Skoda’s withdrawal from the championship all-the-more bewildering. Or should that be intriguing?
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