| Calendar |
| New events | Two new events, Japan and Mexico are added, bringing total number of World Rally Championship rallies to 16. |
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| FIA structure |
| WRC Commission | The World Rally Championship Commission has been restructured.
- Chairman of the WRC Commission, appointed by the FIA;
- Chairman of the Rally Commission, or a representative of the FIA President;
- three team representatives, the first and last in the previous year's WRC
(and also competing in the current year’s Championship), plus one member elected by
the teams;
- three organiser representatives, one from Europe and one outside,
plus one member elected by the organiser;
- representative of the Commercial Rights Holder (non-voting);
- representative of the FIA External Relations Department (non-voting).
A simple majority will be required to pass a proposal. |
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| JWRC |
| Control tyres | Changed from Michelin to Pirelli. |
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| Non-event activity |
| Testing restrictions | Further testing restrictions are issued as follows.
No testing can take place outside Europe at all (previously restricted to one pre-named non-European country). During August and November testing is prohibited.
These restrictions cover only registered teams (contesting full championship). |
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| Safety |
| Safety Group | A Rally Safety Research Group has been established to address four principal areas
concerning rally car occupant safety, as follows:
- crew in-car location and retention;
- roll protection and energy absorption;
- accident data recording;
- driver/co-driver heat stress.
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| Sporting |
| Recce rules | The "Mille Pistes" concept adapted, changing from two pre-event recce runs to one and another run done on morning of each leg. Also, recce can now be carried out with rally cars as well as with standard recce cars. If standard cars are used, those must be registered to country hosting the rally (teams cannot ferry their own recce cars to events any longer). |
| Team structure | Change back to two-car teams in manufacturer championship scoring. |
| Gravel crews banned | Use of gravel crews was banned on all other events except Monte Carlo. |
| Servicing | Flexi-service adopted. Instead of servicing all of teams' cars simultaneously, in flexi-service concept cars are serviced one at a time, reducing the need of service crew. |
| Supe-rally experiment | A trial of a new system to allow cars which have retired in a leg to re-start in a subsequent leg, but without scoring points and without being classified in the event, will begin with the Acropolis Rally. |
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| Technical |
| Tyre restrictions | Starting from Mexico, each works driver are limited to only "ten times the number of tyre change opportunities" of tyres. For example, if there are six tyre changes, driver can have up to 60 tyres available for durationg of whole rally, including weather dependent special treads. Each tyre is identified by a bar-code and selected tyres have to be submitted to the FIA weeks before the event. |
