Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, Škoda, Volkswagen, Citroën, and Mitsubishi were some of the big car brands represented at Rally New Zealand. There were privateers too, like Lorenzo Bertelli of the Prada family, who did well with co-driver Granai, having shipped their Ford Puma Rally1 car plus support staff from Europe at goodness knows how huge an expense.
Rally is a great spectator sport, with drivers and co-drivers in small, very powerful cars going down regular roads and sometimes flying above them - and unintentionally going off-roading, as Welsh contender Elfyn Evans and Briton Gus Greensmith demonstrated with their big crashes.
One major difference this year is that you hardly notice when the cars come in for service and swap tyres around in the depots. They glide in and out in almost total silence.
This is because the WRC has mandated the top Rally1 class cars to be hybrids, so there's the whirr of an electric motor and nothing much else.
Cars in the top Rally1 class are fitted with the exact same P3 electric drive system from Germany's Compact Dynamics. Hybrid drive normally porks up cars, but the P3 system weighs just 84 kilograms with battery, motor and generator.
That's about the same as having another person in the car, and the payback for the small weight increase is another 100 kilowatts of power and 180 Newton-metres of torque.
Hooked up to the car's prop shaft for the four-wheel drive, the hybrid system features a 3.9 kilowatt-hour battery which can be charged from 20 to 80 per cent in 20 minutes, and which is also able to recuperate energy that'd normally be lost while braking and coasting.
All familiar stuff for hybrid owners, except the P3 unit runs at up to 12,000rpm and 750 volts. It is also sealed in carbon-fibre housing which can handle forces of up to 70G, in case of accidents.
Numbers apart, what that means is that the cars can be driven in full-electric mode for up to 20 kilometres, which is further than expected with a 3.9 kWh battery onboard.
The governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) has added a bunch of geeky regulations, like the electric system being able to release the full 100 kW or 1000 kilojoules for ten seconds when starting each rally stage, and drivers can create three personalised maps for how to use the hybrid power after taking off.
All-electric drive is mandatory for depot visits and in built-up areas, which is not a bad thing.
When the internal combustion engines in the cars fire up, they are very audible, despite the vehicles being roadworthy in all aspects, including following noise regulations.
The ICEs are the insanely-tuned four-cylinder 1.6 litre turbocharged petrol engines which output 280 kilowatts that powered the cars in the past.
For this year's WRC meets, the ICEs run on petrol that's 100 per cent sustainable, made from synthetic hydrocarbons and bio-fuel components. The plan is not to have any more fossil-fuelled rallies from now on.
Generators in the service parks need to run on fossil-free biodiesel fuel, and excess power will be fed back into local grids.
This is part of FIA's PurposeDriven strategy, which states that motorsport events must reach zero emissions by 2030. Without that strategy, it's fair to say motorsport would be a dying activity.
You could argue that motorsport in general is frivolous, but humanity has raced each other since forever.
What's more, technology developed for rallies and other events eventually finds its way to everyday cars after it's been tested in harsh conditions to prove its worth.
It'll be a challenge, but future WRC rallies should look at doing away with combustion engines completely, and race EVs built around lightweight, high-capacity batteries that can be charged fast to get them over the finishing line.
