At its last meeting, the World Motor Sport Council ratified the proposal of the FIA Hill Climb Commission to merge the FIA European Hill Climb Cup and the FIA International Hill Climb Challenge as of next season. From their union, an “FIA International Hill Climb Cup” will emerge, integrating the same categories of car as the current Challenge and Cup. This combination was guided by a desire to simplify the titles and to ensure greater clarity, as the Cup and Challenge events are now systematically united under the same events, which was not the case initially. As a reminder, the Cup was specifically created to offer an international platform for Group E1 cars, which are not integrated into the main championship, the FIA European Hill Climb Championship.

Unlike the events of the FIA European Hill Climb Championship, for which the minimum course length must be 5 km, no minimum length is set for the roads used during the events of the International Hill Climb Cup.

The 2014 calendar of the International Cup will be revealed in December following the next meeting of the World Motor Sport Council and of the FIA General Assembly, but it is understood that the programme will be similar to that used over the past few years for the Cup and the Challenge, with events split primarily between Italy and countries in Eastern Europe.

At its meeting of 27 September in Dubrovnik, the World Motor Sport Council also approved a series of amendments to the FIA Safety Guidelines which may be accessed via this link.