The Monte Carlo Rally or Rallye Monte-Carlo is a rallying event organized each year by the Automobile Club de Monaco. From its inception in 1911 by Prince Albert I, the rally was intended to demonstrate improvements and innovations in automobiles, and promote Monaco as a tourist resort on the Mediterranean shore. Before the format changed in 1997, the event was a “concentration rally” in which competitors would set off from various starting points around Europe and drive to Monaco, where the rally would continue to a set of special stages. The rally now takes place along the French Riviera in Monaco and southeast France.
The World Rally Championship is an international rallying series owned and governed by the FIA. Inaugurated in 1973, it is the second oldest of the FIA's world championships after Formula One. Each season lasts one calendar year, and separate championship titles are awarded to drivers, co-drivers and manufacturers. There are also two support championships, WRC2 and WRC3, which are contested on the same events and stages as the WRC, but with progressively lower maximum performance and running costs of the cars permitted. Junior WRC is also contested on five events of the World Rally Championship calendar.
Carlos Sainz Cenamor is a Spanish rally driver. He won the World Rally Championship drivers' title with Toyota in 1990 and 1992, and finished runner-up four times. Constructors' world champions to have benefited from Sainz are Subaru (1995), Toyota (1999) and Citroën. In the 2018 season, he was one of the official drivers of the Team Peugeot Total. He received the Princess of Asturias Sports Award in 2020. Sainz founded the Acciona | Sainz XE Team to join Extreme E and competed in the first two seasons alongside Laia Sanz.
Stig Lennart Blomqvist is a retired Swedish rally driver. He made his international breakthrough in 1971. Driving an Audi Quattro for the Audi factory team, Blomqvist won the World Rally Championship drivers' title in 1984 and finished runner-up in 1985. He won his home event, the Swedish Rally, seven times.
Henning Solberg is a Norwegian rally and rallycross driver. Together with his female co-driver Ilka Minor, he currently competes in the World Rally Championship (WRC) with cars of M-Sport.
Ralliart is the high-performance division of Mitsubishi Motors. It was responsible for development and preparation of the company's rally development of high-performance models and parts available to the public. Ralliart scaled down its business activities in April 2010, though the brand will continue to be used by Mitsubishi.
Gilles Panizzi is a French former rally driver.
Daniel "Dani" Sordo Castillo is a Spanish rally driver. He competes in the World Rally Championship for Hyundai Motorsport. He achieved his first WRC victory at the 2013 Rallye Deutschland.
The 1973 Monte Carlo Rally, run in late January and hosted in the principality of Monaco, was the first rally on the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile's (FIA) new World Rally Championship (WRC) inaugural season, making it the first ever WRC event to be held.
The 1973 Rallye de Portugal was the third round of the inaugural World Rally Championship season. Run in mid-March in southern Portugal on a mixture of asphalt and gravel, the rally began with a concentration run from a number of European cities, covering about 4,600 km and ending in Estoril, Portugal.
The 1973 Safari Rally was the fourth round of the inaugural World Rally Championship season. Run in mid-April in central Kenya, the Safari was a markedly different rally from the other dates on the WRC schedule. About 5,300 km (3,300 mi) of gravel roads comprised the course, though there were not distinct special stages as in other rallies, but instead the course was uncontrolled. The rally was considered very punishing, and thus many of the successful teams were specifically focused on it, leading to a different set of front-runners than led most other rallies. The rally was won by a local driver, Shekhar Mehta.
The 1973 Rally of Morocco was the fifth round of the inaugural World Rally Championship season. Run in mid-May between Morocco's two major cities, Rabat and Casablanca, the Rallye du Maroc was a very long stage rally covering more than 1200 km on both hard and soft surface roads.
The 1973 Acropolis Rally was the sixth round of the inaugural World Rally Championship season. Run in late-May on the punishing hot gravel roads of central Greece, the Acropolis is a long-standing event on the WRC calendar.
The 1973 Austrian Rally was the ninth round of the inaugural World Rally Championship season. Run in mid-September around Baden, Austria, the rally was entirely on gravel surface special stages. 1973 would be the only year to see the WRC hold an event in Austria, despite the strong presence of Austrian drivers in the series through the present.
The 1973 Press-on-Regardless Rally was the eleventh round of the inaugural World Rally Championship season. Run at the outset of November in Michigan in the United States, the rally was run entirely on gravel.
The Subaru World Rally Team (SWRT) was Subaru's World Rally Championship (WRC) team. It used a distinctive blue with yellow colour scheme that is a throwback to the sponsorship deal with State Express 555, a BAT cigarette brand popular in Asia. 555 logos were found on Subaru cars from 1993 to 2003, although less prevalent since 1999 due to BAT's participation in Formula One with British American Racing. Subaru's WRC efforts date back to 1980, however, in 1989 British firm Prodrive took over its operations, and its base moved from Japan to Banbury, England.
Andreas Mikkelsen is a Norwegian rally driver. He is currently competing in the World Rally Championship for Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT. He previously drove for the factory teams of Volkswagen and Citroën, finishing third in the drivers' standings in 2014, 2015 and 2016. His current co-driver is Torstein Eriksen.
Elfyn Rhys Evans is a Welsh rally driver. He is currently teamed with Scott Martin and is competing for Toyota Gazoo Racing in the World Rally Championship.
The Volkswagen Motorsport was a works rally team of the German car manufacturer Volkswagen, who competed in the World Rally Championship (WRC) and Dakar Rally.
The 2018 Rally Sweden was a motor racing event for rally cars that was held over four days between 15 and 18 February 2018. It marked the sixty-sixth running of Rally Sweden, and was the second round of the 2018 World Rally Championship and its support categories, the WRC-2 and WRC-3 championships. It was also the first round of the Junior World Rally Championship. The event, which was based in the town of Torsby in Värmland County, was contested over nineteen special stages totalling a competitive distance of 314.25 km (195.27 mi).
Sweden 
