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Before the season commenced, reigning world champion Kalle Rovanpera had announced that he would contest only partial programme, like team mate Sebastien Ogier was doing too, leaving Toyota short of full time drivers. Expectation was that despite having favourable road position, neither Rovanpera nor Ogier could amass enough points from limited programme to have a shot at the title. As Toyota seemed to be the car to have, their lead driver Elfyn Evans should surely have best shot at the drivers' title.
In Hyundai team, Thierry Neuville was a clear team leader, having been with the team for several years but always coming short of the title due to Hyundai's reliability and his own woes and worries which saw him lose wins and results to final day offs too often. Therefore, as Ott Tanak was making a return to Hyundai, it was expected that he would have best shot at the title fight against Evans.
Or so I thought. But events during the season proved otherwise. Ogier's programme was extended and as season began to wind close, he seemed to have a chance at the title whereas Evans had string of bad results and with just three events remaining, his title chances had dwindled to non-existent. Similarly, Tanak's crash in Finland had allowed Neuville to extend his lead over Estonian.
Overall, Neuville had steady and somewhat unremarkable season. He racked up points at steady rate and despite new points scoring system which placed less emphasis on overall finishing position, he finished outside of top four only three times. Out of which the final time was on Japan where he just needed to score few points. Neuville won only twice and only just racked as many stage wins as part-timer Rovanpera, but crucially he scored most stage wins on Power Stages, scoring extra 25 points from that.
In manufacturers' championship, Toyota suffered from partial programmes and crashes of Ogier and Rovanpera as Katsuta was unable to contribute much in cases where his third car was needed. Hyundai used partial hires to augment Neuville and Tanak. None of the three (Lappi, Sordo and Mikkelsen) fared especially well despite Lappi winning in Sweden. The final nail was Tanak's crash in Japan, which annulled his points there and handed the title to Toyota with just three point margin.
Revelation of the season was Adrien Fourmaux, M-Sport's lead driver. After partial season in Rally2 car, he was now back with full programme on Rally1 car and he finished on podium no less than five times. Admittedly, on many occasions this was thanks to faster drivers crashing out but his steadiness and generally good pace in clearly uncompetitive Ford Puma impressed many. To a degree that he was scooped up by Hyundai who signed him for their 2025 line-up.
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Calendar for 2024 season was published a month earlier than last time but again it was very late (19th Oct 2023). Changes in it saw Estonia replaced with neighbouring Latvia (which is a new event) and Poland made return as Mexico was dropped. Safari moved from summer to spring while Acropolis and Chile swapped places.
The biggest and most unpopular change wwas championship points scoring scheme. It was altered radically to a more convoluted and confusing direction where points were awarded for separately for three ways. Firstly for overall classification after Saturday, separate classification for Super Sunday only and the traditional Power Stage. To score for Saturday, driver had to finish.
All in all, this made it possible for the overall winner to score less points than someone else (which happened in no less than four times in rallies of Sweden, Portugal, Latvia and Central Europe). Also, it made very difficult to calculate points haul and predict standings before rally actually ended.
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2024 FIA World Champions: Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe
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Drivers scoring their
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first win
no new winners
first drivers' point
G. Linnamae (Sweden)
L. Joona (Sweden)
M. Heikkila (Sweden)
R. Korhonen (Sweden)
J. McErlean (Portugal)
M. Sesks (Poland)
R. Virves (Acropolis)
F. Mares (Central Eur. Rally)
first stage win
G. Linnamae (Sweden)
M. Sesks (Latvia)
S. Pajari (Finland)
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