Grand Finale: Rally Saudi Arabia Pushes WRC to Make the Most of Cameras and Drones for Sandy Spectacle

Grand finale: Rally Saudi Arabia pushes WRC to make the most of cameras and drones for sandy spectacle By Heather McLean

Tuesday, January 20, 2026 - 09:33

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Rally Saudi Arabia in November 2025 marked a bold new finale for the WRC - fast, wide gravel roads, dramatic desert backdrops, and the pressure of wrapping up a global title fight on unfamiliar ground

FIA World Rally Championship's (WRC) 2025 season ended spectacularly in December with a new event in Saudi Arabia. The finale of the season [25 to 29 November 2025] was based in Jeddah, Mecca Province and was contested over seventeen special stages, covering a total competitive distance of 319.44 kilometres (198.49 miles).

Rally Saudi Arabia marked a bold new finale for the WRC - fast, wide gravel roads, dramatic desert backdrops, and the pressure of wrapping up a global title fight on unfamiliar ground.

Saudi Arabia was the first time for us, says WRC Promoter's senior director content and communication, Florian Ruth. It's a new event in our calendar. It's the start of a long cooperation with us and the Saudi Motor Company (SMC). Obviously the first year was about getting to know each other, but I have to say it was a really great start.

We tried to really build up to the spectacle. We created the opener shoot on the heli platform of the highest building in Jeddah, which was really good

Enormous tension

An unusually late decider on who would win the finale made for an even more exciting race, says Ruth. The sportive story helped us, because the Championship absolutely went down to the wire. The Championship was decided on the very last stage of the season; it was absolutely crazy. The fight between the French man, S bastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans from Wales was a hell of a battle, until absolutely the very last stage of the season where Ogier clinched his ninth world championship title, just a fraction ahead of Evans.

Read more Fever pitch: WRC is back for the start of the 2026 season with Rallye Monte-Carlo in 1080p for the first time

The tension to see who would win the battle aided WRC's viewing figures and the new race location, says Ruth. We race across all over the world, 14 races, approximately 18 to 20 stages per race, so it's quite a phenomenon that it comes down to the very, very last stage. So this tension, especially on the last day of the season, was quite enormous, but it was good. We had a really, really good broadcast; we produced over 20 hours live from the season finale, and it was really a good ending to our season and a good start to our long-term cooperation with Saudi Motorsport Company (SMC) and our racing in Saudi Arabia.

WRC pushed the camera angles to showcase the city of Jeddah and the terrain of Saudi Arabia, says WRC Promoter's Florian Ruth

Pushing the camera angles

Based out of Jeddah, this new event in the WRC calendar introduces a unique blend of open desert speed and rocky technicality. The roads are smooth and fast in places, but quickly shift to rougher, more abrasive terrain where caution becomes key.

WRC has pushed the camera angles to showcase the city and the terrain, says Ruth. We tried to really build up to the spectacle. We created the opener shoot on the heli platform of the highest building in Jeddah, which was really good; that was the opener to all our TV programmes and so on.

From a broadcast perspective, we had to adapt our broadcast system a bit, as for example, Starlink isn't operating in Saudi Arabia yet and from our broadcast perspective, we're using a lot of Starlink and telecommunication devices like LiveU's and so on, a lot of LTE and 5G technologies. So then we had to adapt, but nevertheless, we delivered a very, very good broadcast.

The high speed Red Bull Drone One footage at Rally Saudi Arabia:

High speed drone

The Red Bull Drone One, which WRC first used in 2025 at Rally Islas Canarias, featured heavily in a particularly tricky and spectacular shot carried out for the first time by WRC.

Ruth explains: I think from a broadcast perspective, one of the coolest things we did in Saudi Arabia was we brought in the Red Bull Drone One, this high speed drone that we premiered live last year in the Canarias. What we tried to achieve and what we did in the end was to fly a very, very long section a section like we've never flown before and we managed to fly over almost an entire stage. I think in the end it was 8.5 kilometres that we followed the car with a drone and at absolute high speed.

It was really, really spectacular and a really, really great achievement from the team. That's another glimpse where drone technology and also with the future of the broadcast, how it can and will look to a certain extent.

WRC used the Red Bull drone on a few races over the course of the season. It is not possible to use it all the time due to natural obstacles. However, in the desert it could be used to the max.

For Saudi Arabia, we wanted to achieve this very, very long shot. We actually had planned it for Finland, but in Finland with the forests and the massive amount of spectators, in the end we weren't able to do it.

Obviously the geographical circumstances made it possible to really achieve and go for those shots, but it's technically quite a challenge, and for the pilots. We need to relay the drone signals back to the pilot, and then obviously to follow the drone for such a long time. It's quite an intense operation for the technology, but especially for the pilot, to be spot on for such long time, Ruth concludes. The total time for the drone pilot to operate the device for the 8.5 kilometres was just over five minutes.

In the end, the footage is quite amazing, I have to say.

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