File photo: a Hyundai i20 N Rally2, the car class Lia Block competes in, at the 2021 Barum Czech Rally Zlín. Photo by Miloslav Rejha via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
Andrew Wheatley has been talking about Hyundai’s World Rally Championship future for longer than it usually takes a manufacturer to build an entirely new rally car. That’s not a jab at the Hyundai Motorsport sporting director — it’s the actual state of play heading into 2027, and it says more about the WRC’s new top-class rulebook than about any indecision in Alzenau.
The FIA settled the technical framework for the championship’s next era back in June, when the World Motor Sport Council met in Macau and signed off on both the WRC27 regulations and a companion piece that matters just as much: the Rally2-WRC-Kit. It’s a bolt-on package, new front fenders, a front bumper, a rear aerodynamic device, capped at €7,500 and designed to bring existing Rally2 cars closer to parity with the brand-new WRC27 machinery arriving at Rallye Monte-Carlo. Fit the kit, shed a bit of weight down to a 1220kg minimum, and a Rally2 car can race for outright wins in the WRC’s top category through 2027 and 2028, no ground-up redesign required.
That’s the mechanism the FIA built to stop the grid thinning out as the championship changes formula. It’s also the reason Hyundai’s hesitation is such a live issue: the kit only works on a Rally2 car that clears homologation before December 31 this year. Hyundai’s new i20 N Rally2, a heavily revised version of the current customer car rather than a new WRC27 challenger, is racing toward that exact deadline regardless of what gets decided about 2027. Wheatley confirmed the first chassis is already in assembly, with a test programme covering tarmac, medium-speed gravel and high-speed gravel due to start shortly, the same spread of terrain the WRC calendar is built around every season. Getting the car homologated by year’s end doesn’t commit Hyundai to anything at the top level, but it keeps the option alive, which is exactly the point.
So far, precisely one manufacturer has taken that option. M-Sport-Ford has committed to building the Rally2-WRC-Kit for the Fiesta Rally2, giving it a bargain-priced route into the top class while Toyota Gazoo Racing spends real money on the alternative: an all-new WRC27 car built to the €345,000 cost cap, complete with a tubular safety cell and double-wishbone suspension, already through three evolutions and more than 5,000km of testing. Toyota is also on course to equal the championship’s record for manufacturers’ titles this season, which makes bankrolling a clean-sheet design less of a gamble and more of a statement about where it thinks the WRC is heading.
Hyundai is stuck between those two examples, and Wheatley’s own description of the decision tree explains why. He’s framed it as three sequential steps: first, understanding the WRC’s new promoter structure, which is resolved. Second, understanding what the 2027 sporting regulations will actually look like in practice, which depends on an upcoming WRC Commission meeting. Only after that gets settled does the question go back to Hyundai’s head office to weigh short, medium and long-term priorities. In other words, the FIA and promoter still owe Hyundai clarity before Hyundai owes anyone an answer.
That leaves three realistic outcomes once the picture clears. Hyundai could homologate the kit itself and run a factory-backed i20 N Rally2 at the front of the field. It could supply cars to a privateer or customer squad and step back from direct factory involvement. Or it could skip the top category altogether and let the i20 N Rally2 live purely as a customer product. Wheatley was explicit that the new car is being engineered for a “wider window of operation” than a three-driver factory programme, built to compete across international, regional and national series rather than just the WRC. Even a full withdrawal from the top class wouldn’t end Hyundai’s rallying story, it would just shrink it.
The stakes go beyond one manufacturer’s badge on a bonnet. The entire logic behind the Rally2-WRC-Kit was to stop the WRC27 grid from looking sparse in its first seasons, and the FIA’s own deputy president for sport, Malcolm Wilson, said the framework exists to support larger fields and help deliver “a fantastic contest at the highest level of rallying.” If Hyundai sits out the kit route while it deliberates, Rallye Monte-Carlo’s season opener risks arriving with Toyota’s new car and M-Sport’s converted Fiesta as the only serious factory presence at the front, not the deeper field the regulation was written to guarantee.
There’s also a driver-market subplot worth watching. Hyundai is currently fielding five contracted drivers, and a shrunken or restructured top-level programme would leave some of them hunting for a seat in 2027, the same uncertainty already shaping Hayden Paddon’s situation after his return to the factory line-up this season.
Watch three dates from here. The WRC Commission meeting that’s supposed to finalize the 2027 sporting format. December 31, when the homologation window for the new i20 N Rally2 closes. And Rallye Monte-Carlo next January, when we find out whether Hyundai used the door the FIA left open, or walked past it.
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