At the Montalegre circuit in Portugal, electrical vehicles and combustion engine cars are racing in opposition to one another in an FIA-championship occasion for the primary time. The FIA, or International Automobile Federation, is the governing physique behind some of the largest motorsport championships, together with Formula One. Billed because the “Battle of Technologies”, the FIA World Rallycross Championship sees each applied sciences compete on equal phrases, with every automobile having benefits and drawback that have to be balanced in order to win races.
Rallycross races happen on mixed-surface racetracks, and whereas the electrical cars have prompt torque, and about 100 extra horsepower, giving them a bonus on lengthy straights, the interior combustion engine (ICE) cars – which run on sustainable gas that’s made of “70% of sustainable components”, the gas producers say – are round 160 kilograms lighter, giving them higher dealing with round corners.
“The battle of technologies just adds a little bit more excitement to what we already call the most exciting world championship that we have within the FIA,” says Arne Dirks, managing director of FIA World Rallycross.
After going absolutely electrical in 2022, the game has been struggling to impress its long-term base of combustion fanatics, and following a fireplace in 2023 that destroyed two electrical cars, the format wanted a rethink. “The fire certainly didn’t help our sport,” says Dirks, “of course, it influenced the decision to go that way”.
So, regardless of Dirks telling New Scientist in 2022 that the electrical transition meant “the old sport doesn’t exist anymore”, combustion engines are again. This time, nevertheless, the groups can select their know-how. Currently, about half the paddock has retained electrical vehicles. “[The]combustion engine is technology of the past,” says Susann Hansen, workforce supervisor at Hansen Motorsport, who elected to stay with electrical cars this season. “For us, it was not only a business decision to go into electric. It was also a personal belief that we need to do something. That I can look my children and my grandchildren in the eye to say we have done something,” she says.
For Dirks and others in the paddock, that is solely the beginning of what is feasible. “The battle of technologies is at the moment EV cars against ICE’s, but I think as a championship, we should be open also to new technologies,” he says.
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