The World Rally Championship spent this season's Rally Estonia testing whether a shorter rally can still feel like a full one. The verdict from the crews was close to unanimous: it can.
Estonia rolled out a condensed 50-hour format designed to cut operating costs for organisers and teams alike. The competitive distance held firm at 301.8km across 18 stages, but the structure around it was squeezed. Crews reached host city Tartu later in the week, recce ran on Wednesday and Thursday, and a WRC demonstration in the Tartu city centre on Thursday evening drew a warm reception. Shakedown moved to Friday morning, six stages filled Friday afternoon and evening, nine more followed on Saturday, and Sunday closed with two passes of the 24.39km Kaariku stage — starting at 11am, some two and a half hours later than Sunday's opener in Greece. The compression was only possible because Estonia's stages sit close to the service park.
Sebastien Ogier, the nine-time world champion, needed no persuading. "Fantastic, I loved it," he told Motorsport.com. "It is good to have some rounds in the championship like this. It is a bit less load for everybody involved in the championship."
"The race was a bit intense for us, but it was nothing too bad, we still had time to rest overnight," Ogier added. "We spent much less time on the road sections so overall it has been good. I think some rallies like this in the championship should be like this."
Thierry Neuville, Hyundai's 2024 world champion, welcomed the variety as much as the efficiency. "I like when it is changing formats and different adventures and every rally should have its own storytelling," he said. "In the end we were able to do 300km, it is not possible everywhere with this format but here it is a very compact format and the stages are not so far away. It worked out fine for me."
The main critique concerned balance rather than the concept. With 10 bonus points on offer across Sunday's Super Sunday leg, several drivers felt too much was crammed into Saturday. Neuville's team-mate Adrien Fourmaux wanted the weekend tilted further toward the finale.
"Personally, I would condense it even more [on Saturday] to have a longer Sunday because with this Super Sunday points system it makes sense," Fourmaux said. "The 10 points you can gain from two stages is a little bit too much. When you see Oliver Solberg [who took the maximum 10 Sunday points] taking one less point than [rally winner] Sami [Pajari] it is a bit unfair I would say."
M-Sport-Ford's Josh McErlean saw both sides. "I think maybe there is a bit too much crammed into one day. It is OK for this event with the notes we had and the stages we knew," he said. "Maybe we could start earlier, but I like the demo we did, so there are things to take out of it."
The FIA argued the benefits reached well beyond the cockpit. "I think it is not only the drivers and teams that like it. I can see it from the organiser side, and I can see marshals on the stages and people in rally control," said Emilia Abel, the FIA's road sport director. "The length of the days is becoming reasonable with reasonable rest hours for everyone. You don't finish the rally on Sunday thinking the only thing you want is to go to bed."
Whether Estonia itself survives is a separate question. This year's edition was the last of its current contract, and its place on the 2027 calendar is unresolved as the championship prepares to welcome new events, with Rally Scotland already signed for a three-year run and Rome poised to take Italy's slot from Sardinia. "The WRC promoter is currently having discussions about the 2027 calendar and is aiming to have it approved at the August FIA world motor sport council and will be announced in September," Abel said. For now, Estonia has handed the series a blueprint that the paddock, for once, seems to agree on.
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