FIA Reprimands ACP and Fines It a Suspended €15,000 Over the Arganil 2 Tow-Truck Incident at the Vodafone Rally de Portugal — Two Organisation Vehicles Entered the Live Stage Within 35 Minutes

The FIA Stewards at the Vodafone Rally de Portugal closed Saturday's session with a formal reprimand and a €15,000 fine against the Automóvel Club de Portugal — the historic operator of the WRC round and Portugal's national motoring federation — after two organisation vehicles drove onto the live SS7 Arganil 2 stage on Friday 8 May 2026 within a 35-minute window. The fine is suspended through 31 December 2027 on the condition that the organisation does not repeat the same offence. The Stewards also formally requested ACP to implement immediate safety-protocol upgrades for the remainder of the rally weekend.

What Happened on the Stage

The first vehicle, a tow truck belonging to ACP's contracted recovery company, entered the special stage at the kilometre 16.03 point after its driver — by the FIA Stewards' reading — followed a GPS routing through what should have been a closed forestry road. The driver pushed through more than one safety barrier, did not register at the marshal post, but ultimately exited onto an adjacent forest track and stopped without contact with a competitor. Approximately 35 minutes later, a second tow truck from the same firm — sent in to assist the first — entered the same stage from a different access point and was crossed by competitor car #21, prompting the immediate red-flagging of the stage and a session-wide neutralisation that cost the lead group on the order of nineteen seconds in lost stage time.

The Article 12.2.1.h Violation

The FIA's reasoning, signed by the Stewards' panel and published Saturday afternoon, found that ACP had breached Article 12.2.1.h of the FIA International Sporting Code 2026 — the catch-all framing for "acts that are unsafe or that lead to an unsafe situation," which the Stewards now apply to the failure to communicate either of the two vehicle entries to Race Control in real time. The Stewards' written decision underscores that even where the road-closure responsibility is contractually delegated to civil-protection authorities (in Portugal's case, GNR detachments, civil parishes and the local protection commission), the rally organiser maintains responsibility for the officials it appoints — and the chain of communication for those appointed officials is part of the safety system the FIA reads as non-delegable.

Why the Suspended Sentence

The €15,000 fine is the FIA's mid-tier corporate penalty for an organisational safety breach short of an actual injury or fatality; it is a non-negligible figure but well below the €100,000+ band applied where contact with a competitor or spectator follows. The two-year suspension through end-2027 is the standard second-look instrument the Stewards use when an organiser shows immediate corrective response — ACP installed additional roadblocks at SS7 in real time and raised the stage-marshal density for the SS8–SS17 stages over Saturday and Sunday, the FIA noted.

What This Lands On for the Portuguese WRC Calendar

• The Rali de Portugal calendar slot for 2027 is not at risk from this decision in isolation; the FIA WRC Commission's slot allocation runs on a separate cycle and tends to penalise repeat infractions, not first-instance suspended fines.
• ACP's contractual liability with the FIA for the 2026–2030 cycle includes a safety-management clause; a second Article 12.2.1.h breach inside the suspension window would activate that clause and convert the €15,000 figure into the seven-figure band.
• The recovery contractor — not named in the public version of the Stewards' decision — is the natural target of ACP's own internal review; expect a contract-amendment cycle around GPS routing, vehicle activation logs and stage-clearance certification before the 2027 round in Matosinhos and Centro.
• The fan-spectator side of the rally is unaffected — the Friday window where the incidents occurred was deep in the forest tracks of the Arganil/Lousã section, with no general-public spectator zones at the kilometre points where either vehicle crossed.

Sébastien Ogier won the rally on Sunday — his seventh Portuguese title — and the FIA's standard winner's interview did not address the reprimand. The Vodafone Rally de Portugal returns to the WRC calendar in May 2027.