DOLGELLAU driver Elfyn Evans is looking forward to a new era and the exciting challenge of driving a new car as the FIA World Rally Championship 2022 season gets underway.

Elfyn will race Toyota Gazoo Racing’s GR YARIS Rally1, the successor to the all-conquering Yaris WRC, which claimed a clean sweep of the manufacturers’, drivers’ and co-drivers’ in the 2021 season that concluded just eight weeks ago at Monza in Italy.

Now, the roads of the French Alps will play host to the first event for the revolutionary Rally1 cars, which take over from the World Rally Cars that have formed the highest category of the WRC for the past quarter of a century.

Elfyn said: “This is an exciting time in our sport and I’m looking forward to the challenge of these new cars.

“Since I first tested the GR YARIS Rally1 we’ve made some good progress, but it’s impossible to know where we stand relative to the competition until we get to Monte Carlo.

“So much has changed and it’s a clean sheet of paper. It’s not been easy to jump from a car that was so well-developed, where everything was coming quite easily, and into something that is a lot more unknown.

“The additional power from the hybrid system makes a huge difference and how you manage it could be worth quite a lot in certain cases.

“We’ve already learned a lot in testing and I’m sure we’re going to continue learning a lot during the year, starting in Monte Carlo.

“It’s a rally that’s always a bit of a lottery with the weather anyway, and now the base has moved south there’s a lot of new stages and different terrain to get to grips with.”

Rally1 cars feature several significant changes compared to their predecessors, headlined by the arrival of hybrid technology to the highest level of rallying for the first time. The hybrid unit in each car comprises of a 3.9kWh battery and a motor-generator unit (MGU) delivering an additional 100 kW (134 PS) under acceleration.

After a shakedown on Thursday morning, the rally will begin in the evening from the iconic Casino Square ahead of an opening pair of night stages – the second includes a return to the classic Col de Turini, to be passed in darkness for the first time since 2013.

Friday is the longest day of the rally and consists of three stages to be run twice with no mid-day service, only a tyre-fitting zone in Puget-Théniers.

The task is similar on Saturday, which takes place further to the west: Three stages will be run in the morning, two of which will be repeated in the afternoon after a tyre-fitting zone in Digne-les-Bains.

The rally’s final day on Sunday is made up of two stages run twice – the latter stage finishing in Entrevaux is the only one that is identical to last year.