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Hi Everyone,
I have a FB RX7 which we prepared for historic Road regularity rallying, however, on entry to the rally we were rejected due to the regulation 18.3.2. “A standard Wankel unit will be considered as three cylinders – twin Wankel units are prohibited.”

Has anyone managed to get a waiver for this regulation previously? We have raised it to the motorsport UK board for review and they determined 3 items against its regulation withdrawal:
1. A twin rotor would be consider more than the allowed 4 cylinder limit. —> although waivers are granted for 6 cylinder cars, E.g. Porsche 911’s
2. Noise concerns —> assuming it meets the regulations for noise levels, not sure how this is an issue.
3. One competitor asking for it isn’t justification to change —> I can’t argue that one.

So I suppose I was wondering if anyone has previously managed to get a waiver for this to support our case to get this removed. It was apparently introduced in 1984, would just be nice to introduce different cars into historic regularity rallying.

Thank you

I don;t know of any other form of motorsport that considers a single rotor as eqivalent to three cylinders. Is this just a 'regularity' thing? Certainly an effective way to ensure that anything other that a single rotor powerplant is inadmissable.

There are a number of rotary powered mazdas from the 70's competing in European rally events. Maybe these do not have the regularity aspect associated with the event?

Stupid regulation. Never seen it before, it’s not in any part of the blue book for circuit racing.

It’s under the Road rally rules. Seems to only apply to road rally too which is frustrating. We checked the regs and missed this twin rotor reg. Seems out dated so seeing if anyone has managed to waiver out.

Considering how few RX7s are around, I can’t imagine many people have run into this issue.

Well, I’ve queried the response. Hoping to get this changed. Thanks for all your responses. I’ll let you know the outcome.

R81.3.2 states "twin Wankel unit" not twin rotor.

My view is that a Wankel Unit is the whole engine ?

Look up a your local MSUK Scrutineer and get a technical opinion from him. Also contact the MSUK technical departments for an explanation as to exactly what they mean by "twin Wankel unit".

What motor club was this and do you have the name of the scrutineer that refused you a start.

Total nonsense and complete mis-application of the regulations.

Complain and appeal, after all rotaries are clearly allowed in stage rallies.

The biggest problem is that most MSUK scrutineers have absolutely no idea what a Rotary engine is and the response that you had from MSUK just reinforces that.

Ask them how the RX7 has more than 1 FIA Homologation for international competition, so why do they deem it necessary to prevent it being used in road rallies ?

Also ask them what is a "Wankel unit" as per the blue book. If they cannot define it, they cannot enforce it.

You car has a SINGLE Wankel unit.

MSUK also said that I wasn't allowed to premix oil to my fuel. Twats, thats what the standard engine does !