WRC
goes
back to
school

However, we won’t be studying anything boring like mathematics, chemistry or physics. Instead we’ll be learning about handbrake turns, power slides, and flat-out crests.

Rally Class season two has been launched for 2013 - but it’s not aimed at schoolchildren. Instead, it’s for absolutely anyone who wants to compete at FIA World Rally Championship level on a budget.

For 270,000 Euros, drivers get a fully-inclusive package that allows them to compete on six rounds - Portugal, Greece, Finland, Germany, France and Spain - in a Group N Subaru Impreza run by Symtech Racing: the squad that clinched the Production Car world crown last year with Hayden Paddon, and which organises Rally Class as well.

Competitors can also register for the full WRC-2 at the same time as doing Rally Class, as the regulations are the same.

“The price includes everything: drivers just have to get themselves to the rallies,” said Symtech’s Dirk Van Der Sluys. “Rally Class offers the perfect balance between competition and value: on four out of six rallies this year, a Rally Class car actually beat the PWRC winner.”

The winner of the series next year will get four fully paid WRC rounds in 2014 in an R4-specification Impreza. The second-placed driver gets one WRC rally in a Group N Subaru.

This year’s inaugural winner is Ukrainian driver Yuri Protasov (pictured), whose Rally Class victory in Spain earlier this month was his fourth of the season. “This series has been great fun: I’d recommend it to anyone,” he said.