The World Rally Championship is again. The Monte Carlo rally kicked off this week, marking the start of the 2025 WRC season. Movies rising from the levels thus far show one factor: the highest stage of stage rally is as wildly entertaining as ever.

The Monte Carlo rally is understood for its sketchy tarmac surfaces, which may evolve from dry pavement, to muddy ruts, to sheets of ice within the span of only a few corners. Studies from the official FIA YouTube channel from day one of many occasion confirmed simply that, with drivers pushing to their absolute limits to seek out each single second.

The primary few levels of the occasion came about at night time, with eight-time champion Sébastien Ogier successful the primary two earlier than narrowly avoiding a nasty crash on stage three, which left his automobile hanging off the aspect of a ditch. That allowed final 12 months’s championship winner Thierry Neuville to take the general lead.

As nice as this 12 months’s competitors is getting down to be, it is the wild footage coming from these night time levels that has us most enraptured. Particularly, video from stage three, the place vehicles are flying up the aspect of a mountain on a switchback street lined by spectators, paints an extremely brilliant image for the way forward for this sport.

These sorts of scenes hark again to the Group B period, the place plenty of spectators would danger their lives to get near the competitors vehicles as they flew down levels. Whereas these trendy machines won’t have as a lot horsepower, they’re simply as fast down a stage, and much more entertaining to look at.