Full number of entries in Monte-Carlo, but only 10 Rally1

This year once again the opening round of the world championship confirms its attractiveness. The 75 available places were quickly allocated. If the Rally2s will be numerous, the Rally1 category will remain small.

Published on 19/12/2022 à 07:31

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Full number of entrants for Monte-Carlo, but only 10 Rally1

The Rally1 field will be sparsely stocked at Monte-Carlo in 2023 © Grégory Lenormand / DPPI

The suspense remains, but the Automobile Club of Monaco has still released some information concerning the entry list for the first rally of the next season. Once this list has been validated by the FIA, it will be revealed on Monday January 9. Once again based in Monaco, the event was forced to limit its total number of participants and the 75 places available at the port were quickly filled.

For their second year in competition, the hybrid Rally1s will be fewer in number than in 2022 (10 compared to 11). The champion team will be complete with Sébastien Ogier, Kalle Rovanperä, Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta who will not score points for Toyota. At Hyundai, Thierry Neuville will perhaps be the only one to have competed in the last edition since neither Esapekka Lappi nor Dani Sordo was at the start. The team based in Alzenau in Germany could also choose Craig Breen for his 3^e car, but the Spaniard holds the rope.

M-Sport also registered three Puma, 2 of which have already been allocated to Ott Tänak and Pierre-Louis Loubet. The names on the windows of 3^e exemplary remain the only uncertainty in this category. Is Fergus Greensmith leaving for another season with M-Sport? Have Lorenzo Bertelli or Jourdan Serderidis decided to come and measure themselves against the oldest of the events? Will there be a mystery guest or on the contrary will this commitment disappear on January 9?

A nice field in WRC2 at Monte-Carlo

There are also unknowns among the 16 WRC2s that have been announced, but several contenders can already be put forward. Adrien fourmaux (Fiesta), Grégoire Munster (Fiesta), Nikolay Gryazin (Fabia), François Delecour (Fabia) or Yohan Rossel (C3) will be there and they will aim for points in this category like the ten candidates to discover including 5 in Master . However, this will not be the case for Oliver Solberg who will be there just to gain experience.

With only one competitor, Rally3 confirms its difficulty to convince and the first assessment of this list is that there is still a large place occupied by amateur crews. Scheduled for January 19 to 22, the 91^e edition will offer 325,02 timed kilometers divided into 18 special stages, the first of which will be launched on Thursday 19 from La Bollène-Vésibue at 20:05 p.m.

ALSO READ > François Delecour at the start of the Monte-Carlo Rally in a Skoda Fabia RS Rally2