Q&A: FIA Rally Director Andrew Wheatley

Earlier this month, Wheatley was appointed to the position following Yves Matton’s departure in December. He was in attendance at the Azores Rallye in the FIA ERC last weekend.

Here’s what he had to say: 

Q: Andrew, thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule. For the people who may not be aware, could you tell us about your background in rallying?

AW: I’m not sure I can remember that far back to some places! I started competing back in 1988 on the day after my 16th birthday, where I co-drove for a family friend at the Oulton Park Stages. 

A year later, I was able to start driving on Welsh national rallies four days after passing my driving test. For a couple of years, we did clubman competition in the UK up to competing in the British Rally Championship. I thoroughly enjoyed the time that we had, rallying as a family at home - the whole family got involved in it. 

From that I had a deal with my father, which was that if I got what he described as a ‘proper education’, he would help me to try and find the support and the sponsorship to continue to go forward. And that's that's how it worked out  - I was competing whilst I was in university. When I finished university, he said, ‘right, that's it, you're on your own’. 

For the last 20 years, I’ve been lucky enough to work in the sport that was originally a hobby and I’ve competed myself whenever the opportunity arose. I've been very lucky to be able to work with drivers like Colin McRae, Carlos Sainz and Marcus Gronholm over the 20 years that I worked at M-Sport. 

I’ve tried to do up to four rallies a year when time has allowed in my 100 horsepower Ford Puma. It’s been fantastic to be able to see what's happening, not only at the top of the sport, but also at the grassroots level. 

Q: It must be an exciting time to be taking up your new role with the new hybrid era now underway?

AW: It’s absolutely fantastic. There's been a huge amount of work that's gone on behind the scenes in the last three years, and I think Covid has been very difficult. There are a lot of people who have lost their jobs through Covid and a lot of organisers who've had very, very difficult times. 

One of the things it has enabled us to do is to be able to focus on the next generation - to take the time to be able to understand what the challenges are. And to also appreciate the enormous amount of work that goes on behind the scenes, from the organisers to the promoters, to the competitors, to the fans, to see exactly the depth of the commitment and enthusiasm that there is for rallying. 

Now that we're hopefully coming out of this period, we're seeing events all around the world with huge entries, and a real, real passion to try and put those years behind us and to understand how we can go forward.

Q: As you mentioned, things are starting to get back to normal. How do you see the WRC calendar developing over the next few years?

AW: There's a huge pent-up demand not only from competitors, but also from organisers and promoters in the regions, to be able to exploit and to be able to propose new venues to bring back some of the old venues. 

Q: We are two rallies into the 2022 WRC season. What has the feedback been like so far?

AW: Well, every day's a school day at the moment. We have so many new developments. We've got a new safety cell, we've got a new sustainable hybrid fuel system, we've got new scaling on the Rally1 cars and we've got new technical regulations. 

The biggest single change has been the hybrid, there's no question. It's the biggest development in terms of the complexity of the car that we've had in probably the last 20 years. Every day is a challenge, and the manufacturers have done an unbelievable job in producing spectacular-to-look-at, great-sounding cars that have literally blown us away with their performance. 

For the evolution of a car, you always push two per cent, two per cent, two per cent. Sometimes you get a big change in the regulations, and you push 10 per cent. Genuinely, the change between 2021 and 2022 is 65 to 70 per cent of the car. 

We've made a seismic change in the fuel development with the sustainable fuel. You normally push in small increments to try and understand step by step. This is a completely new chemistry for the fuel, and as a result, there will be challenges as we go forward. But these changes are being wholeheartedly supported and I think one of the really positive things that we've seen with the introduction of the new Rally1 class is that the fans have really got behind them. 

Q: Have you been impressed with the new cars?

AW: Last summer we drove to the south of France to watch a test of the new generation of hybrid cars. I think there were five of us there from the FIA and we just looked at each other with open mouths and said, ‘oh my god, the speed is unbelievable’. With the 2017 cars, I think we'd kind of got used to the fact that the speed was incredible around the corners. What was amazing about this was that when they put the foot down on the straights, you could visibly see it going.

As a rally fan myself to go and witness, it was just amazing. In the past we've had phenomenal performance cars. You know, in the Group B days when I was 13 years old, I remember travelling in the middle of the night with my father to go watching in Clocaenog. That was amazing, but there was always the risk that something horrible was going to happen. 

I think with this generation of cars, some significant things have happened. With the safety cell, there is an incredible amount of work that’s been done to literally half the risk that's there for the competitors. 

Q: There’s been a big emphasis on safety, hasn’t there?

AW: It’s an incredible thing when you see the crash testing that took place. 17 WRC cars were destroyed to understand what happens in an accident, and then five safety cells were destroyed to ensure that the results of those crashes were put into place properly. That's an incredible commitment by the manufacturers and the FIA working together. 

When you see something like Adrien Fourmaux’s crash in Monte Carlo or Thierry Neuville’s crash on the test before Monte, you just breathe a sigh of relief. That's the work that's been done. The understanding that is now in place of what happens in these accidents can encourage the drivers that they can take some of these risks. 

I think what's also equally important is the work that has been going on to understand that for the fans, if they stand in a place that’s dangerous, first of all they're putting themselves at risk, but they're also putting their friends and colleagues at risk and the stage will get stopped. 

I know the technology is now there, through the promoter and through the organisers to be able to say, we can't take those risks anymore. The fans understand that and they want to watch the cars. The whole experience of watching the rally is radically different to what it was 15 to 20 years ago

Q: Looking to the future, there’s a new regulation cycle coming in 2025. What can you tell us about that?

AW: Everybody is looking towards the future of the automotive industry and I think today, it's not clear. There is a huge amount of work going on at the moment to understand how we can integrate what we've got and enable it to evolve with the technology as we go forward. 

There's no question, the automotive industry is changing, and it's changing rapidly. The role that we have is to try and work with the stakeholders to be able to understand what changes can be integrated, and how they can be integrated. 

I think the positive thing is that, with the current generation of Rally1, we have the basis in place for a very strong future. The cars are not going to change 100 per cent, or completely change the evolution as they did in the past. We're going to be going back to incremental changes. 

The principle will be, what is the power generation source? The work that's going on now is to understand what the steps are to go forward and how we can plan to see the next generation unfold. It is an active discussion, a very active discussion. And I do expect that by the end of this year, we'll have a clear roadmap as to how that's going to be. 

The good thing we have at the moment is that we have a very strong opportunity and a very clear commitment, that’s going to take us into the short term. It's how we evolve in the mid-term and change in the long term, that’s the discussion.

Q: FIA Rally Star has been a big success so far. How can we build on that to bring more newcomers into the sport?

AW: FIA Rally Star has been a phenomenal undertaking - it's a huge project. When you physically visit it and see the numbers of people that are going through the process on the digital motorsport side and from the rally at home and slalom selections, you see the passion and enthusiasm in the people that get through to the final. 

We're looking at how we can expand on things going forward. There is nothing new in motorsport, everything has been done before in a different way. 

We're looking to try and identify what works, what has worked, and modify to enable the next generation of competitors from all over the world to be able to get the same benefits that I was lucky enough to enjoy, (Deputy President of the FIA) Robert [Reid] as a world championship co-driver was able to enjoy and (President of the FIA) Mohammed [Ben Sulayem] as a former champion driver himself was able to enjoy. 

It's not just the thrill of competing and it's not just the opportunity to achieve those targets that you set yourself. It's the camaraderie, the sportsmanship, the lifelong friends, the experiences. 

It's not just that we want to generate a series of drivers. There is a huge circus of people who work in motorsport, and a group of those working on rally. That’s everything from working in media, to working in the technical side as the engineers or technicians, to the officials and the event organisers. 

There is a huge range of people who work in this environment because they started competing in that environment. The opportunity to not just experience the thrill of competition, but the joy of all those other experiences, is what we need to generate in young people. 

We need to see the next generation of event organisers, the next generation of technical scrutineers, the next generation of media representatives. The world is changing so fast, and the bottom of the pyramid provides all those opportunities globally. That's something that we really want to focus on with a strategy to enable the next generation of competitors to get there.