I had a ride in a Rally1 car – this is why they'll be missed

For the last four years, the World Rally Championship's top-class has run to Rally1 regulations, featuring spaceframe machines powered by 1.6-litre turbocharged engines – initially with hybrid powertrains. Largely freed from the homologation rules of the World Rally Cars they replaced, Rally1 machines were just about the fastest thing to ever hit a rally stage. But they were also hugely expensive and so, after just four years, the category is being ditched. This weekend's Rally Sardinia season finale will be the final outing for the Rally1 class, before the new WRC2027 machines – featuring less powerful engines and a spec tubular chassis – come into force. At Goodwood this year I had the chance to ride in a Toyota GR Yaris driven by 18-time WRC event winner Jari-Matti Latvala, for an up-close taste of the new machines. Riding in the Toyota GR Yaris In the co-driver seat of the GR Yaris, I can only see a limited amount of the interior - my vision is blocked by the looming wings of the tight bucket seat, while the taught harness prevents me from moving around all that much. The cabin is devoid of almost everything you’d find in the road going car, save for the ghostly outline where the road car’s distinctive dashboard used to be. It's just as otherworldly from the outside. Leave your glasses at home and it looks just like the road car from thirty feet away, but get up close and the differences are myriad. The car seems impossibly wide thanks to the pumped out arches, and the aero package is just as ridiculous at the rear thanks to the simply gigantic split-level rear wing. Under the bonnet, the 1.6-litre four-pot is a thing of beauty, sitting deep in the bowels of the chassis with gold heat shielding protecting 3D-printed parts wherever you look. The minimum weight of the car is just 1180kg, and this Yaris has over 365bhp to push that mass along through that regulation five-speed gearbox. The 309bhp-per-tonne power to weight ratio is roughly equal to a BMW M8 Competition. Anyway, back to the stage. The four pot bursts into life, the high idle sounding more like a chainsaw than a car. This is loud with a capital L - were it not for the helmet intercom, there’s no way I would’ve heard Latvala talking. “Some bits are very slippery,” the Finn says in what seems like the calmest voice I’ve ever heard. The Hannu Mikola-designed route sits on a bed of concrete covered with a fairly thin layer of loose gravel which has a tendency to wear down over the four days of the Festival of Speed. With ten seconds to go, things start to happen. Latvala engages the first stage of the anti-lag system, igniting the fuel-air mixture inside the exhaust manifold and starting off a stream of assault rifle-style bangs as the turbo begins to spool up. Five seconds later, the revs rise even higher as we prepare for launch, filling the cabin with one of the single most aggressive noises I’ve ever heard in my life. To call the launch brutal would be an understatement. All four of the wheels fight for traction on the tarmac as the nose seems to pitch itself skywards and we rocket away from the line. The softly-sprung suspension immediately tips the right-hand side of the car down as we slide through a narrow, hay bale-lined left hander. We shoot under a thick canopy of leaves on a route that seems scarcely wide enough to fit the car along, the anti-lag popping and banging as we go. The trees feel close enough to touch, but Latvala is unphased, keeping his right foot firmly planted to the floor through the fast sweepers of the first sector. The grip available on this less-than-ideal surface beggars belief in these quicker turns, and as Latvala slews us sideways through a fast left-hander it seems that understeer is something of a foreign concept to the Yaris. The front end grips like a vice and the rear follows almost as well: more often than not, the car is facing the exit of the corner almost as soon as we enter it. My instinct is to keep my eyes looking as far down the road as possible, but I force my vision onto the other side of the car to see how on earth Latvala is making this happen. His inputs are hypnotic to watch, his left hand never leaving the alcantara rim of the steering wheel no matter how much lock he has on, whilst his right busies itself with the gearstick and handbrake, and his legs stay eerily still as his feet glue themselves to the pedals. Looking back out of the windscreen gives my eyes the ability to slightly keep up with what my body is feeling. It’s brutal in every way, and I seem to always be pulled in two directions at once due to the fact that we always seem to be sideways. We head into a sharp right hander and I feel the rear of the car mount the bank slightly as Latvala uses all of the road and a little bit more. No worries for Latvala as he simply plants the throttle to allow the mechanical differentials front and rear to pull us through, fishtailing a little before we finally straighten up. The stopping power on tap is astonishing, too. The car’s nose pitches downwards as the calipers clamp the huge 300mm brake discs, slowing us at a rate that would be impressive on tarmac. I spot a jump approaching and prepare myself, but Latvala doesn’t seem fussed about lifting. We hit it flat and fly for almost 50 feet before the 270mm of suspension travel softly drops us back down to earth. I’ve had worse thumps through my seat hitting potholes at 20mph. I sit slack-jawed in amazement as we negotiate the final few corners, the turbo chirping away by my feet, and before I know it we’ve crossed the finish line. This is the last year we’ll see these Rally1 monsters in action, as the WRC shifts to a less extreme formula that’ll see slower, simpler cars fight on the stages for the overall title. As I clamber out of the Yaris in sheer disbelief, I can’t help but feel like that’s a shame, given the utter lunacy of these current cars.

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I had a ride in a Rally1 car – this is why they'll be missed

This weekend's Rally Sardinia marks the end of the line for Rally1 – and that's a great shame

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I had a ride in a Rally1 car – this is why they'll be missed

This weekend's Rally Sardinia marks the end of the line for Rally1 – and that's a great shame

More from Autocar

Top 10s

Latest car reviews

Top manufacturers

Quick search

We recommend

Legal bits

About Autocar