RX1, Supercar, what’s in a name?
Rallycross Supercars are going to become RX1 cars. Does it matter?
by Rallycross World |
Last week the FIA World Motor Sport Council approved ’a new naming convention’ for cars taking part in FIA rallycross championships. Which means the FIA is changing the name of the cars.
“Hands off!” you cried on social media in recent days. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but to be brutally honest if you are reading this, or if you count yourself as a true fan, an expert or an anorak, what does it matter to you? I doubt any of you will stop watching rallycross because the FIA has changed how it describes the cars. It will not, after all, make any difference to what happens on the track.
The FIA is trying to make it easier for the casual observer or new fan to understand our sport. My sport. Your sport. It believes that anyone can easily grasp that RX1 is bigger, better, faster, more important than RX2.
If your interest is wider than rallycross alone you will probably be aware that the FIA has been chipping away at this topic for some time; it finally managed to create a pyramid of single seater classes from F4 to F1, has realigned rally categories similarly and has now decided rallycross should follow. The ‘e’ suffix within the rallycross classes is there to denote those for electric cars.
Do we care? Yes, of course! Passionately.
Should we be getting annoyed by it. No. There are more important things to think about.
The name change is the result of discussions that have been going on for more than a year. And if it helps a new audience understand rallycross more easily, or helps those charged with selling the sport to commercial partners, broadcasters, new event organisers, new fans to get their job done and bring our sport to a wider audience we should all be happy.
For the record, the current class names (Supercar and Super1600 – along with the now defunct TouringCar) were introduced for the 2011 season. Prior to that what is about to become RX1 was known as Division One from 1997 to 2010 and as Division Two from 1982 to 1996. Between 1978 and 1981 the FIA Championship had two categories; GT and Touring Car, before which (1973-1977) there were just rallycross cars, all in one class and all racing against each other.
What the cars have been called has changed down the years but it’s all rallycross, always has been, and will continue to be.
