The future needs to come a bit sooner

World Rallycross Championship’s stuttering steps to electrification is a problem Last week we reported on the future of the World Rallycross Championship, which appears to have hit some hard times. With Mattias Ekstrom’s EKS team pulling out for 2019 too, there are some worrying times.

The problems for the series seem to revolve around the delayed decision to implement electric technology into the category until 2021, which was something the leading manufacturers were keen to see happen. The World Rallycross Championship is almost the perfect fit for electric power, given the short sharp races and the all-action format. That is what had the manufacturers keen on pushing through the alternative technology and that would then give them something to shout about. When the decision was taken to push back electrification of WRX by just a single year, it has had a drastic effect.

Series bosses wanted to give manufacturers more time to investigate the possibilities of joining a fully electric series, but that has led to a mass exodus. The future needed to come just a bit sooner, but it is also a lesson to other disciplines in motorsport. Matt James, Editor