The weekend
A rally is a multi-day time trial, not a wheel-to-wheel race. After Thursday's shakedown, crews — driver and co-driver, racing the clock on pacenotes — tackle three days of special stages on closed roads, linked by public-road sections run to a strict timetable. Friday and Saturday carry the bulk of the distance; servicing is rationed to set windows at the service park, and from 2026 crews are guaranteed a minimum of ten hours' overnight rest. Sunday is deliberately its own contest: a shorter final leg with separate points at stake, capped by the rally-ending Wolf Power Stage.
Points
The top nine at rally's end score 25-17-15-12-10-8-6-4-2 — tenth gets nothing. Sunday then adds two bonus pots: the five fastest on accumulated Sunday-only times collect 5-4-3-2-1, and the top five on the Power Stage collect another 5-4-3-2-1 regardless of where they sit overall. A perfect weekend is worth 35 points — and crucially, a Saturday retirement no longer writes off the rally, because both Sunday pots stay open to anyone who restarts.
What decides things
The restart rule shapes everything: a retired crew may rejoin the next morning after re-scrutineering, carrying a ten-minute penalty per missed stage. Tyres are a single-make Hankook supply with fixed allocations per event, so compound choice and carrying spares become strategy. Road order matters too — the championship leader runs first on gravel Fridays, sweeping the loose surface for everyone behind. And 2026 tightens engine discipline: two engines per car for the season, with an in-rally swap costing a 60-minute penalty. The Rally1 cars themselves — 1.6-litre turbo, four-wheel drive, no hybrid since 2025 — race a final farewell season before the 2027 rules overhaul.
The championship
Three world titles run in parallel: drivers, co-drivers — scoring identically alongside their drivers — and manufacturers, contested across 14 rounds by Toyota, Hyundai and M-Sport Ford. Each manufacturer nominates three crews per rally but only its best two results count, although Power Stage points still score even for a filtered-out crew. Beneath the headline class, WRC2 and WRC3 give privateers in production-based machinery their own world championships on the same stages.