Sustainable development is so often framed as a future-facing project that it can be hard to substantiate progress.
In short, while looking ahead is necessary for the longevity and ongoing relevance of motorsport, it sometimes does a disservice to milestones that have already been achieved.
One series that has already done more than most is the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC), which began life as a traditional gas-guzzling series, rather than a project established with sustainability in mind, such as Formula E or Extreme E (now Extreme H).
WRC’s transition is what makes its progress particularly impressive, especially since the championship is so proactive with how it approaches sustainability. At last year’s Beyond Rally Forum in Portugal, produced by SportsPro, WRC launched its Sustainability Roadbook outlining the series’ ambitions for the future, as well as guidelines to follow.
Notably, the roadbook had little to no direct input from the International Automobile Federation (FIA), though WRC did align its plan with the governing body’s overarching environmental strategy.
But what has WRC achieved so far as the series looks to make further improvements
1. Offering women tangible progress
Talent pathways to grow female participation in motorsport are not a new concept. For instance, F1 Academy has continued the good work started by the W Series in providing opportunities to women in single-seater series.
Offering tangible progress from these initiatives is where things get more difficult. While this challenge will hopefully continue to be addressed, WRC has put paid to the idea that this is a long-term dream.
Last year, 15 applicants were chosen to undergo intensive training at the M-Sport Poland headquarters in Krakow. The camp included a day each of gravel and tarmac testing in a Ford Fiesta Rally3, as well as simulator testing, pace-note and reconnaissance competence, PR training and an evaluation of mechanical knowledge.
Lyssia Baudet, Suvi Jyrkiäinen and Claire Schönborn were selected to contest the Central European Rally where one driver was set to be chosen for a full-time seat in the 2025 Junior WRC, though things did not turn out to be so simple.
“As a result of that [training camp], we identified three of them and we went to the Central European Rally and there was a tough fight,” Peter Thul, senior director for sport at WRC Promoter, tells BlackBook Motorsport.
“At the end, we had two of them who were so close together … we thought maybe it was worth another try to find out who has the best potential to go on.”
Last weekend, Claire Schönborn came out on top at the Rally Sweden to win the prize of a full-time seat. But what does this mean for progressing a woman to the top-level of the championship?
Thul believes “it should be possible in five years”, which is a lofty ambition, but it highlights the meaningful progress that WRC is seeking to provide.
“In five years’ time we should have somebody in WRC2 fighting for good results, for podiums,” continues Thul. “For sure it’s good for PR and for the image of the sport, but if she’s not fast enough it doesn’t help.”
Thul points to rally legend Michèle Mouton as a source of inspiration. The 73-year-old is one of the most successful female racing drivers of all time, who progressed on merit in the 1970s and 1980s and finished second in the overall standings in WRC’s 1982 season.
Being able to draw on this history is of great benefit to the series but ensuring there are modern-day heroes to look up to is equally important. The process for this is now in motion thanks to the female driver development programme, which has encouraged the all-female Iron Dames outfit to enter a full WRC2 team for this season.
“We are just at the beginning of something,” says Thul. “We will see maybe in the future there will be more formats, more women, more mature women that have been competing for some years in different championships … jumping to WRC.
“They are welcome because we are open, we are accessible, and we love to have more women competing in the top level here.”
Of course, WRC has already seen success with the likes of Sarah Rumeau, who achieved a top-ten finish at this year’s Rallye Monte-Carlo in WRC2 as part of the Iron Dames initiative, while Enni Mälkönen and Reeta Hämäläinen have won WRC3 and WRC2 co-drivers championships.
Finnish driver Enni Mälkönen (left) claimed the WRC2 co-drivers championship in 2024, having won the same title at the WRC3 level in 2022 (Image credit: Getty Images)
2. Achieving the top level of FIA accreditation
Three-star environmental accreditation is the universal gold standard across all of motorsport, and it is a crucial pillar of WRC’s expectations for both its own carbon footprint and those that wish to collaborate with the series.
Notably, WRC was the first FIA world championship back in 2016 to mandate three-star environmental accreditation for event organisers. By 2027, WRC expects all teams, suppliers and event organisers to have the accreditation.
It is hoped that setting these clear deadlines will result in meaningful progress outside of the series’ goals for itself.
This has also seen WRC set up the Beyond Rally community, which currently stands at over 60 sustainability managers from its events.
“They see how we can speed up the accreditation process [and] we have the ambition to become a leader in that space,” says Bernhard Hafenscher, who is leading strategy and innovation at WRC Promoter.
“Some of these [other programmes] don’t have other definitions than your inner wish to do the right thing, to be part of the solution and not part of the problem,” adds Marc de Jong, head of business at development at WRC Promoter.
“It’s not about leadership, it’s about being a trailblazer and hoping that people will adopt that. We’re really pleased that the FIA is recognising our willingness and saying ‘let’s bundle forces, we’ll lift this to an even higher level together’.”
Michèle Mouton, Burcu Çetinkaya and Pernilla Solberg speaking at WRC’s Beyond Rally forum prior to the 2024 Rally Portugal (Image credit: Getty Images)
3. Assessing WRC’s carbon footprint
When WRC is evaluating its carbon footprint, the series must consider the organisation itself, its media production and all of the events. The scale of the operation is large and, therefore, so is the CO2 emitted.
In 2024, only WRC events were scoped out. This year, the series will also include events run under the FIA European Rally Championship (ERC). However, collecting and assessing the carbon footprint is far from simple.
“If you collect [your] carbon footprint, the first thing you have to deal with is the scope of your collection,” explains Hafenscher. “[For] example, is the fuel consumption the teams need to get to the actual rally part of your scope?
“We’re still at the beginning of this whole journey, understanding carbon footprints and how we can mitigate that and reduce that.”
Even so, the series has almost completed the analysis of all rallies held in 2024, with each subsequent year of collecting this data creating a more complete picture of the series’ carbon footprint.
It is also yet another sign of how proactive WRC is in attempting to become more sustainable, given carbon footprint collection is not part of the FIA accreditation programme.
Ultimately, reducing emissions from logistics will have the biggest impact on the carbon footprint of WRC. Indeed, around 80 per cent of the championship’s total emissions currently come from logistics.
WRC is helped by the fact that the majority of its races are in Europe, which means it can rely a lot more on road and sea freight than other global championships. The potential to maximise environmental efficiencies is much greater thanks to the makeup of its calendar.
For de Jong, it’s easy to get motorsport engineers on board with the concept of sustainability by relating it to marginal gains.
“Making every little step together makes a massive step,” he says. “Making ten improvements and each give a tenth of a second is all of a sudden a second a kilometre.
“That’s the kind of language motorsport people relate to – efficient use of resources, battling waste. You’re not actually talking a different language, you’re just applying it to something else.”
The Safari Rally in Kenya is one of WRC’s most sustainable events, with a particular emphasis on environmental conversation (Image credit: Getty Images)
4. Navigating the biodiversity challenge
Whereas collecting and analysing WRC’s carbon footprint can be boiled down to figures, biodiversity is a much more nuanced and complex topic.
As a result, the series signed the Sports for Nature Framework, which aims to deliver ‘transformative nature-positive action across sports by 2030 and beyond, enabling sports to champion nature and contribute to its protection and restoration’.
Part of this framework means that WRC cannot access any UNESCO World Heritage sites, which are locations that WRC plans its events around.
The series has also begun to apply methodology to its events in an attempt to create a measurement for biodiversity.
“There are a number of impact categories in biodiversity,” says Hafenscher. “So the water pollution, it could be dust, it could be noise, it could be disturbed animals in their breeding and feeding.
“Then you define the strength of that impact. Is it temporary? Is it long? Is it more severe? We applied this for the first time for the Safari Rally last year in Kenya where we could have a complete overview of what the impact could be.”
Tellingly, when the FIA started its biodiversity initiative, it used the methodology established by WRC in the first report that was subsequently published by motorsport’s global governing body. Long-term, the FIA will be able to take advantage of this experience in putting together its biodiversity programme.
But this isn’t new to an organisation like WRC which has been considering its environmental impact for decades.
“I’ve been working for WRC for the last 25 seasons,” says de Jong. “We were doing calendar planning 20 years ago around the breeding season of certain birds in Spain in springtime. We were planning calendars around making sure Rally New Zealand didn’t happen in critical lambing seasons.
“It’s something that is ingrained in the DNA of rally. Most of us have always recognised we’re a guest in the environment of not just the people, but also nature.”
Looking to unlock more exclusive insights and strategic connections in the motorsport industry?
The BlackBook Motorsport Forum is the destination that connects and inspires top decision-makers and leaders across global motorsport. Join us in London on 27th March 2025 to dissect the critical balance between on and off-track performance, exploring areas such as technical innovation, sustainability and commercial success. Discover more here.