Watching World Rallycross racing in person is excitement with a soundtrack: little violent turbocharged, four-wheel-drive monsters on a course filled with tight corners, a joker lap layout and at least one jump all striving to be the first-place winner. Contact happens. Crashes happen. Fires happen…my wife and I got to watch Ken Block hop out of a burning Ford in 2012 in Las Vegas at such an event. Rallycross is exciting, loud, and all of that is about to change dramatically.
According to motorsport.com, come 2020 the World Rallycross Championship is going all-electric, per an unnamed source. The race cars will share a common monocoque “tub” that will include safety gear, suspension and brakes, but the electric motors and composite body shells will be different. That means that while you should still visibly see a Ford, Audi or Peugeot racing off of the line, you won’t hear jack squat except neat little “whirring” noises and that other than the whole electrified part, you will see WRC racing turned into NASCAR: silhouette racers that are mostly identical across the board.
Here’s a really good question to ask, though: is an electric vehicle ready for the abuse that rallycross racing is going to dish out? We know that an electric vehicle can be fast enough to be entertaining…the guy who stripped out his Tesla Model S and is happily sending just about every thing that lines up next to him packing proves that. What is in question is the idea of the same car on dirt and making jumps. Can the suspensions and drive systems tolerate the added stress of supporting the weight of the batteries while the driver is treating the car like a cheap Alamo rental with the walk-away insurance? This might be interesting to watch…but how many of you would be interested in watching it?
Is this an early April Fools joke ? I certainly hope so.
Absolutely WILL NOT watch it, or have any interest in it at all! Will treat it the same as the current Formula E, it doesn’t exist.
Look, I like the sounds of traditional motors as well but the WORLD is going electric. It’s done. Get over it.
Gas powered engines are going to be a niche thing in the future. You will see it in racing but the big manufacturers are going to stop developing gas motors as electric takes over…and it WILL take over. As a result they will slowly get out of top tier raving series that don’t go electric.
Great, make the cars heavier, slower, and boring. Was kind of digging Global Rallycross, now not so much. Will continue to watch while they have IC engines. When the slot car motors show up, I’m gone.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pathetic…
Ive watched electric cars race and its like watching a race on tv with the mute turned on (its boring as hell). Hopefully Global rallycross doesn’t follow this trend, its currently one of the most fun races you can watch in person.
I guess the millennial will like this type of racing. Look ma, no ear plugs!
Kind of like watching paint dry – no thanks
The only people that really care about electric cars ,are those that drive 6 feet to work.the 99.99999 percent of us that drive a bit to work still need a car with range . And a race without engine wind ,come on . These guys and NHRA must have lunch together so they can come up with bullshit ideas.
I was disinterested in Rally Cross before this story but now I am aggressively disinterested.
Should just be a separate class. Anyone who disses an electric car never drove a Tesla.
Bob, it has nothing to do with speed. If you don’t get it, find another hobby.
Did NHRA take over World Rallycross?
What a horrible idea. Sure they can make good torque but they will all be the same and very boring.
I am wondering what environmental group WRC is trying to please with this idea?
They obviously didn’t learn anything from FIA’s mistake on engine rules that made the F1 quieter. Now, they are trying to come up with engine packages that bring back the engine roar.
If F1 fans complained for years how the cars sounded less like race cars and more like an over revved Dyson vacuum cleaners, how are fans going to respond to near silence of the cars of this racing series?
My guess is the fan base complaints will be deafening.
Zero interest before, less than zero interest now.
Car manufacturers will have to sell more electric vehicles due to environmental regulations. One way to sell more vehicles (of any kind) is to race them. Win on sunday, sell on monday.
That being said… the lack of engine music in motorsports seems extremely boring to me. But who knows, maybe “quiet” racing will draw an entirely new crowd of spectators?
Nothing will accelerate the demise of any series faster than going electric. I recently had the unique experience of witnessing some F1 electric racing in a sports bar in Australia. It would actually be funny if it wasn’t so utterly pathetic and impotent. The core appeal of motorsports is that it connects with three of our senses, namely sight, sound, and smell, and of those senses, sound outweighs the other two, (at least in my opinion). I have seen only passing comment on the role “noise” makes in motorsports. No noise, no excitement, period. There are likely several factors driving, (sorry), this push to electrifying motorsports, but I believe attendance and spectator interest will wither and eventually whole series will disappear. Finally, this push to electrified race cars has the sinister stench of capitulating, surrender monkey, globalist, euro influence all over it. The racing bodies making these decisions need to be brutally slagged online and protested by any means possible by fans for their abandonment of ICE powered race cars. There is a simultaneous arc of new technology evolving in ICE engines, (Mazda, others), that if given the chance to come to fruition would offer the noise but in exceptionally efficient packages. Regardless, this should be a warning to Drag Racing enthusiasts. If enough racing leagues adopt electric motors to power their cars, then Drag Racing will come under incredible pressure to adopt or be outlawed. It’s a fatalist perspective, but the world is insane and chaos is the new normal. Defend our interests and rights or watch them vanish. By the way, have you written your congress “person” asking they support the RPM Act?
LAME
Should be a separate series. Or if you want to keep it interesting let the electric complete against the internal combustion competitors. True competition is the only way to for electric cars to be viewed as anything more than cookie cutter commuters.