World Rally Championship to launch Innovation Forum in Monaco

Next week's Rallye Monte-Carlo will host the first in a series of Innovation Forums that are intended to allow “expertise and knowledge” to be shared amongst stakeholders, according to World Rally Championship bosses.

Jason Craig_1

12 Jan 2023

The Innovation Forums has been created as a way of bringing decision-makers, industry leaders, scientists and motorsport organisations together in the one place to deliberate on issues of importance.

Championship bosses also see it as a way of demonstrating how the World Rally Championship has taken steps to align itself more closely with the automotive world following the adoption of hybrid technologies for the 2022 season onwards as part of its Rally1 regulations.

Fossil-free fuel was introduced at the same time as the energy recovery units came on line, with this designed to reduce their carbon emissions across the thirteen round calendar.

It is also hoped the new platform will give groups and bodies the opportunity to “debate challenges, lessons learned and opportunities for motorsport in contributing to the global sustainability, safety, and connectivity agendas”.

How working practices and technologies developed and implemented by rallying’s top division can be carried over to other industries in future is also set to dominate future meetings.

Run in conjunction with Pirelli, FuelsEurope and OCI, the inaugural event has been pencilled in for January 20 in Monaco – the second day of the season-opening Rallye Monte-Carlo which, once again, is based out of the famous Principality area.

“We are proud to welcome high-ranking speakers from the FIA, governments, our major industry partners and from the teams involved in the WRC,” said Jona Siebel – the Managing Director of the WRC Promoter.

“Our common goal is to advance race-developed and proven innovations for their potential application in everyday motoring, global transportation and interrelated industries,” he added.

Siebel added that the decision to push ahead with the Innovation Forum had also been influenced by a successful sustainability conference that was held during Rally Japan last November.

The first-ever World Rally Championship Innovation Forum runs on January 20 from 10am to 4.30pm (CET), with a live-stream available on the World Rally Championship’s official YouTube page.