Alarm bells: FIA World Rally Championship begins rolling out its Command Centre project to bring fans insider knowledge with tests at Rallye Monte-Carlo
One innovation that cut through the smoke at WRC Rallye Monte-Carlo was a first person view (FPV) drone, provided by Skynamic, a German provider of close aerial range filming
FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) has just revved up its fans with the first rally of the season in Monte Carlo, and is about to jump straight into the snow and ice at Rally Sweden. However, this season is about more than racing for Florian Ruth, senior director of content and communication at WRC Promoter. He is excited to be bringing the WRC Command Centre project to life in a series of gradual steps that will bring never-seen-before insider knowledge to fans around the world.
On the season opener at Rallye Monte-Carlo, Ruth says: “It is just always a spectacular to start the season on Casino Square in front of all the glitz and glamour of Monte Carlo, and then directly on the first day to go up in the mountains, finite icy roads and in front of a full house of spectators.”
Yet he adds: “Last year and this year it got absolutely crazy. We had broadcast this spectacular and with fireworks all around the world. But it also got a bit dangerous with all the flares. There are tens of thousands of people in the stage and with the fireworks as well, it is quite dangerous; we had to stop the stage at one point because it just was almost unmanageable to drive anymore because of the smoke.”
Check out the smoke and flares at Rallye Monte-Carlo here:
One innovation that cut through the smoke at Monte Carlo was a first-person view (FPV) drone, provided by Skynamic, a German provider of close aerial range filming. The drone was capable of following cars through tunnels.
Says Ruth: “We had an amazing FPV drone flying in Monte Carlo and we had unbelievable shots. We followed the cars through whole tunnels for the first time, which was really spectacular; we put [those shots] on the broadcast and it was crystal, perfect. It was really the first fly-through tunnel live shot that we’ve ever had in the championship. All our broadcasters and fans were really thrilled by those shots.”
Watch footage of WRC’s FPV drone at WRC Rallye Monte-Carlo 2025 here:
Stage one
Last year Ruth spoke to SVG Europe about a new plan for the Command Centre project, which ultimately would take the form of a single room populated by a screen wall and teams and engineers at stations, watching and talking to their own driver and each other as they careen around the stages, while also able to hear and see what is going on with other teams. In Monte Carlo, that vision underwent stage one of a test.
Getting all the teams into a room together in a Command Centre format is still the long-term plan, says Ruth. “That’s still the vision, but this will be rolled out in a later phase. So we will roll out this Command Centre, launching this project in a couple of phases, which will run across this and the next season.”
This season, phase one of the Command Centre project is about the introduction of data ‘Alarms’ from the vehicles, and also – for the first time in live broadcast at WRC – being able to listen to the conversations between teams and drivers.
Says Ruth: “We did the first steps [at Monte Carlo]. I mean it’s a project, but we will roll it out throughout the whole season. The whole idea for the Command Centre is really about data and transparency. So with this project, it’s for us about much better connectivity inbetween the cars, the teams, and the fans.”
WRC is being supported by Tata and NEP on Command Centre.
“We want to make the sport way more transparent,” Ruth goes on. “Comparing us to other motorsports, what’s quite natural in circuit racing where everybody has all available information, for us, due to the nature of the rally and the geographical difficulties, it always has been difficult to get any data and connectivity out of the cars. But now with our improved systems and obviously advanced technologies we are able to transport way more data now from the cars over to the teams, but also long term, to the fans to make the sport more transparent. And with this it’s more engaging, and that’s our target.”
However, he adds: “At the moment, the teams are still in their war rooms. We provide them the needed technology into those rooms and we help them to have more connectivity to their cars, to have more data, to have more real time updates from the cars, from the crews to the teams.”
WRC started to test its new ‘Alarm’ feature at Rallye Monte-Carlo
Ring the alarm
At Monte Carlo WRC trialled ‘Alarms’, although not in the live broadcast. How it will work as this feature is rolled out in future rallies across the season is, taking data from the many sensors in the cars, the host broadcast knows when something is wrong with a vehicle. An ‘Alarm’ will be shown on the broadcast, leading expert commentators to speculate on what it could be. When the issue type is confirmed via data, a specific Alarm will be shown on the broadcast, giving the commentators more information to discuss during the broadcast, so giving fans more information on what is going on in the race.
Ruth explains: “As a next step, we want to make some of that data available for the fans, for the audience. In the TV broadcast, we call it Alarms. For example, we get the Alarms from the sensors of the cars. So our experts on TV [see the Alarm on screen] and are speculating, “what could it be? Could this be a tyre issue, could it be an oil pressure issue? Or I don’t know, a water leak or something like this?”. We get the [information from the] sensors and we know there’s an issue and we show Alarms in the broadcast, which indicate what kind of issue the car has so we can kind of confirm it.
“[Up till now] it was all speculation, and usually the drivers didn’t want to say anything because they first wanted to speak to their engineer to see how they can tackle the problem, and so on. But now we want to bring transparency to this; when there’s an issue with a car, we want to talk about it. We want to show that driver number five has an issue, a tyre issue, water leak or oil pressure issue, or hydraulic leak issue, or something like this.”
Adds Ruth: “At Monte Carlo we tested it, we’ve seen that it works, and now we will slowly start to roll it out in the broadcast in the next couple of weeks.”
Part of what is making the data capture and transmission possible comes from a Smart Antenna built by technology partner to the automotive industry, Marelli. It filters all data coming from the car sensors and distributes it, so WRC is able to get that data from to the teams, and in the future, to the broadcast.
Next up for WRC is Rally Sweden, the ultimate winter challenge, which is taking part from 13 to 16 February. Sliding around on snow through the frozen forests of Northern Sweden, the cars will hit speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour on studded tyres.