Crystal Ball: “We must be careful to keep the costs down”

We have already heard several assessments about the new technical and sporting regulations as well as the future of cross-country rallies. in the next part of our Crystal Ball series, a real legend, with experience at the highest levels of almost all branches of motorsport, told us his opinion: Prodrive chairman David Richards.

“I think the regulations is more like an evolution of the regulations, not a big step change. They're all things we've been discussing for many years now. So I think it's going to be just a sensible progression.
The big challenge with the new regulations is the balance of technology. The Toyota and ourselves, we're very equal, we are very happy that we have no problems there. The big challenge is to get a good balance with Audi which comes with completely new technology. I'm looking to the FIA, and I'm sure they'll find a good solution for this.
Always in sport, you get small changes, and evolutions. It's quite good now the consultation between the teams, the FIA and ASO and we're starting to get a good collaboration. So I see things going very positively for rally raid for the future.
There will be examples of regulations that we're not totally happy with but we’'ll have to discuss that. You see, these things change all the time, and you'll see that it doesn’t work or it works and you have to evolve the regulation. So we keep our fingers crossed. I think everyone's very sensible, and we collaborate. The good thing about this sport is that everyone's working together. And it's not like a Formula 1 environment. It's a collaborative environment, which is very positive.
I see that the future looks very strong and with the ASO as the promoter, they're doing a very good job. And we now have to just we must be careful to keep the costs down and not let it out of the reach of the private competitors. We mustn’t allow it to become too expensive.”

Bahrain Raid Xtreme is one of the youngest players at the top level of cross-country rallies, so we asked the team boss about how much time does it take to build a new car. “It would take two years to build a brand new car. A year of building the car, designing the car, and then you need a year of testing. To build another car, it takes us about six weeks, something like that.”

Text: Rita Kónya
Interview: Sveta Amelichkina / Cross-Country Rally News
Photos: A.S.O./J.Delfosse/DPPI