WRC points system change set for FIA vote

The World Rally Championship’s controversial points system is likely to undergo a change for next year

The FIA is confident it has an option to present to the World Motor Sport Council to improve and “simplify” the World Rally Championship’s radical points system for next year.

This year’s all-new points structure has proved a hot topic among competitors and fans thanks to its complexity and weighting that many feel has devalued the overall rally victory.

In 2024, points have been split across Saturday and Sunday, with drivers able to claim provisional points for their overall position at the end of Saturday’s leg which are then banked if they reach the end of the rally.

A sliding scale of 18-15-13-10-8-6-4-3-2-1 is awarded to the top 10 at the end of Saturday, but only to those crews who reach Sunday’s event finish.

In addition to this, Sundays offer up a separate points allocation [7-6-5-4-3-2-1] to the top seven fastest crews across Sunday’s stages on top of the 5-4-3-2-1 system for the top five times on the rally-ending Power Stage.

While the new system was designed to improve the action on Sunday, and has been highly effective at creating excitement, drivers and teams have been highly critical of the points weighting of the system that has been derided on several occasions.

The ire seems to stem from the fact that a rally winner can quite easily leave the weekend without scoring the most points. This happened once again last weekend as Elfyn Evans, who finished second at the Central European Rally walked away with two more points than event winner Ott Tanak.

As previously reported the FIA has been evaluating four new proposals to make improvements to the system for next year.

Speaking at last weekend’s Central European Rally the FIA has confirmed that it has a proposal that it will present to the World Motor Sport Council which could be in place for next year.

Autosport understands that the weighting of the points to ensure the rally winner is rewarded more is part of the proposal.

“We have different options, we have been talking about this all season. Every two weeks we have a sporting working groups and different options are on the table coming from the driver’s representative Scott [Martin] and from the manufacturers and from the WRC Promoter.

"Finally we think we have an option to be presented to the next commission that more or less all agree with,” said FIA WRC category manager Marina Dunach.

“It will go to a vote at the World Motor Sport Council and maybe we will have a new points system for next year.

“After looking at the different options presented we have been testing with Excel files what would happen using the different options and thinking what is the best for the championship. We all feel more or less that this is more fair, maybe.”

FIA road sport director Andrew Wheatley, added: “The key priority for the [original] rule change was to try and ensure that we had less of a discussion about Sunday, it created other discussions which is normal, and now the proposal is to try and tweak to simplify it [the points system].”