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The Guanajuato Rally México will take place over three days and will feature 23 stages covering 320.23km. The rally starts Thursday night with two iconic street tests through Guanajuato's former mining tunnels.
The FIA World Rally Championship is gearing up for its third round, the Guanajuato Rally México, which is set to take place from March 16 to 19.
The event, which is back on the calendar for the first time since 2020, will be the season's first rally outside of Europe, and drivers will face a range of challenges on the mountainous stages in Mexico.
Ott Tänak, currently leading the championship, knows that his standing will come at a cost when he opens the road for Friday's opening leg on the stages coated in dry and slippery gravel
The tracks become cleaner and faster with each car that passes as the loose dirt is swept aside.
The M-Sport Ford driver hopes for rain to bind the loose gravel together, but the event is forecasted to have sunny skies with temperatures nudging 30°C.
"I'm not sure I'm that good a [rain] dancer to get the rain in a place where it almost never rains!" Tänak joked while speaking to WRC media.
"The team is working hard to keep improving, but to really understand where we are now, we need to do a gravel rally first," said Tänak, who is joined in the team by Pierre-Louis Loubet and privateer Jourdan Serderidis.
Sébastien Ogier, a six-time Mexico winner and part-time driver for Toyota GR Yaris, will benefit from Tänak opening the road.
"When I knew that Mexico was coming back, I had to mark it in my calendar as an event that would be nice to do again.”
“It's where everything started for me in the WRC, as it's actually where I made my debut in 2008," said the Frenchman.
The route climbs to more than 2,700 metres above sea level, where engines traditionally struggle to 'breathe' in the thinner air and lose 20% of their power.
However, the Rally1 cars' hybrid specification brings a battery-powered boost less impacted by the thinner air, which could make this one of the fastest rallies Guanajuato Rally México has ever seen.
Dani Sordo, who will be the last of the frontrunners onto the road, will be keen to make the most of the extra grip to put himself in a strong position for the last two legs, when competitors start in reverse order of classification.
"If we get it right, we believe we can be in the battle for victory, but we want to be on the podium as a minimum," said Sordo.
The Guanajuato Rally México will take place over three days and will feature 23 stages covering 320.23km.
The rally starts Thursday night with two iconic street tests through Guanajuato's former mining tunnels.
Three more days of action follow in the Sierra de Lobos and Sierra de Guanajuato mountains before Sunday afternoon's finish in León.
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