WRC
WRC pre-season testing explained
In the build-up to the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship season, social media has been filled with videos of teams testing to prepare for this week’s season opener at Rallye Monte-Carlo.
There is little time for teams and crews to rest in the six-week gap between the end of the 2025 season and the start of the 2026 campaign. This period is crucial for preparing and developing upgrades aimed at improving performance, which crews need to test in order to be in the best possible shape for the annual curtain-raiser.
Videos of crews pounding along snow-covered and icy asphalt roads in the south of France have been flooding social media, but what exactly goes on during these test days?
WRC Rally1 teams are allotted 21 days a year to conduct pre-event tests in Europe to prepare for rallies. In addition to this allocation, teams can test unrestricted at their own permanent facilities. Toyota Gazoo Racing has a gravel base in Finland, Hyundai Motorsport has recently relocated its test base to France where it has access to both gravel and asphalt roads, while M-Sport Ford has access to gravel roads and a purpose-built asphalt circuit at its UK factory.
The 2026 WRC season swings into action this week
© WRC
Given the limited number of test days, pre-event running must be used wisely to ensure cars are set up correctly and drivers are comfortable with the conditions they will face at specific rallies. Usually, each driver will be allocated one pre-event test day to get up to speed for Monte-Carlo.
On paper it seems a simple process, but in reality it is far more complicated. First, a public road with similar characteristics to the rally must be selected and permission sought from the local authorities to close it. Marshals then have to be sourced, usually from the local motor club, to ensure a safe environment for drivers to test and for those living in the area.
Once this is achieved, teams devise a test plan listing all the items and set-ups they wish to run through. A timing loop is fitted to the selected road so teams can compare and analyse times after each test run. This data is gathered and assessed alongside driver feedback. Test days can involve multiple runs, keeping mechanics busy making the required changes to the cars.
“On the test we are just trying to complete steps to make the car go faster in simplistic terms,” said Tim Jackson, M-Sport Ford’s lead engineer for the WRC Ford Puma Rally1.
“Each rally has their own individual characteristics and Monte-Carlo is very much like that. One of the key aims is to try to get the drivers comfortable with the car and make it predictable so they know what it will do in a wide range of conditions.
“The weather is very changeable in Monte-Carlo and they could come around one corner and it will be full ice but then full dry 500 metres later, so we just try to make them feel comfortable by doing small set-up changes around a baseline set-up. We also try to do a lot of work on tyre combinations because we have four different tyres we can choose from in Monte-Carlo. It is about trying to get that background information to allow us to make the best choices on the rally and have the team and the driver confident with those choices.”
There are so many scenarios, so we cannot test everything, but the experience helps a lot.
Testing doesn’t always go to plan and can sometimes fall victim to mother nature. Heavy snow earlier this month meant Toyota and Hyundai had to abandon and reschedule test days for Sébastien Ogier and Thierry Neuville. This often requires teams to seek permission from the FIA to reschedule.
When preparing for Monte-Carlo’s famously changeable conditions, drivers hope to encounter a mix of dry, icy and snowy conditions during their test day to gather as much data as possible. This is not always the case, meaning test days often become about finding a healthy compromise.
“We try to test for all the conditions and all the scenarios we can get during the rally. There are so many scenarios, so we cannot test everything, but the experience helps a lot,” said Neuville.
Neuville's Monte-Carlo preparations were complicated by heavy snowfall
© Hyundai
What is a test day like for the driver?
For drivers, test days can be intense. The information gathered from countless runs up and down the test road is often critical to performance and set-up direction once the rally gets under way.
“It depends a lot on what the feeling is like in the car, especially on the early runs of the test,” said Toyota’s Elfyn Evans.
“Normally the team already arrives with a few ideas that they want to try, maybe some development parts they want to explore. But a lot of the running during the day will depend on those first few runs you do in the car. If the feeling is as you expect, or if it is more difficult than you expect, then maybe you have to go off script a bit to get the car into a window.
We used to have test days in the past where you would do 300 kilometres, which is almost a rally distance.
“You just drive the car as you would tend to do on the stage and then try to relay to the team exactly what the car is doing and let them digest that in engineering terms. You need to provide your feedback as a driver and let the engineers do their work.
“It is an intense day and you do a lot of kilometres. We tend to do less in this modern era, but we used to have test days in the past where you would do 300 kilometres, which is almost a rally distance. You know you have been in the car by the end of it, but that is part of the game.”
Part of the game indeed and, come Monte-Carlo, whoever has made the most of their pre-event testing could find themselves reaping the rewards on the stages.
