Career mode improvements
This is what I have been thinking about a lot. I love the benefactor approach which happens also in real life in rallying. However, once a driver achieves the ultimate goal, they don't need a benefactor anymore and actually get paid for their job by a factory team (to put it simple). I would love to see this chance to get rid of the benefactor at some point of your career in the future WRC games.
Furthermore, the next phase could be that once an established and well paid driver, you could some day start a team of your own in any class (with you as a driver or hired drivers) by using the wealth accumulated during your factory driver days.
Of course this could be made even more immersive if sponsorship would matter in the game. By securing sponsors you wouldn't have to only use your own money to run the team (also pay drivers should be included depending on their ability). It would be also realistic if running a WRC1 team wouldn't actually be business but more like covering expenses and running a lower tier team (WRC2, JWRC) could even be considered a way of making money (as it is to some private teams like Toksport, M-Sport, Printsport etc.).
In addition, driving other races than WRC events should have some relevance compared to real life. Like private drivers often do single races in ERC (an ERC license would be epic) or national championship events. The off-championship races like Indonesia, Scandinavia or Corsica would work perfectly for this purpose.
The thing is that these off-championship events shouldn't be some historic FWD championships because it just isn't realistic. Up-and-coming drivers and their benefactors don't use money for such events. The devs do not need to worry even if historic cars are not included in the career mode because there are lot of us who want to drive those cars anyway in addition to career mode as well (oh, and I do love the historic cars so much!). They just don't fit well with a realistic and immersive career mode where a driver wants to become well paid professional WRC1 driver.
I truly hope at least changes something of this sort would be the future direction of EA WRC career mode in the future.