Related Research Articles
Rally is a wide-ranging form of motorsport with various competitive motoring elements such as speed tests, navigation tests, or the ability to reach waypoints or a destination at a prescribed time or average speed. Rallies may be short in the form of trials at a single venue, or several thousand miles long in an extreme endurance rally.
The World Rally Championship is the highest level of global competition in the motorsport discipline of rallying, owned and governed by the FIA. There are separate championships for drivers, co-drivers, manufacturers and teams. The series currently consists of 12 three to four-day rally events driven on surfaces ranging from gravel and tarmac to snow and ice. Each rally is usually split into 15–25 special stages which are run against the clock on up to 350 kilometres of closed roads.
Richard Alexander Burns was an English rally driver who won the 2001 World Rally Championship, having previously finished runner-up in the series in 1999 and 2000. He also helped Mitsubishi to the world manufacturers' title in 1998, and Peugeot in 2002. His co-driver in his whole career was Robert Reid. He is the only Englishman to have won the World Rally Championship as a driver.
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 is currently competing in Extreme E for the Acciona | Sainz XE Team alongside teammate Laia Sanz.
Juha Matti Pellervo Kankkunen is a Finnish former rally driver. His factory team career in the World Rally Championship lasted from 1983 to 2002. He won 23 world rallies and four drivers' world championship titles, which were both once records in the series. Both Sébastien Loeb and Sébastien Ogier have since collected more world titles, but no driver was able to repeat Kankkunen's feat of becoming a world champion with three different manufacturers until Ogier matched this achievement in 2020.
Tommi Antero Mäkinen is a Finnish racing executive and former driver.
Rallycross is a form of sprint style automobile racing, held on a closed mixed-surface racing circuit, with modified production or specially built road cars, similar to the World Rally Cars. It is mainly popular in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Great Britain. An inexpensive, entry level type of rallycross is the Swedish folkrace or its Norwegian counterpart, the so-called bilcross. The folkrace is most popular in Finland where it was founded back in the late 1960s. In Europe, rallycross can also refer to racing 1:8 scale off-road radio-controlled buggies.
Rally Australia is an automobile rally event which was held in Coffs Harbour as the final leg of the World Rally Championship (WRC) until 2018.
Ralliart is the high-performance and motorsports division of Mitsubishi Motors. It was responsible for development and preparation of the company's rally racing and off-road racing vehicles, as well as the 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.
The Rally China (中国拉力赛) is the largest rally racing event held in China. The first event was run as the China Rally in 1997 in the province of Guangdong, as a replacement to the Hong Kong - Beijing Rally, and was an event on the World Rally Championship (WRC) calendar in 1999. However it was replaced by the Cyprus Rally the following year. From 2000 to 2015, it has been part of the Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC), moving initially to Shaoguan, Guangdong province. "Force majeure because of government", according to the organisers, led to the cancellation of the event in 2003. The event moved for a single year to Huizhou, Guangdong in 2004 before reverting to Shaoguan. From 2009 until 2015, the event was hosted in Longyou, Zhejiang province. The event returned to the WRC calendar in 2016 after moving to Huairou, Beijing, but was cancelled due to weather damage. China will continue to host a round of the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship in Zhangye, Gansu in 2016 too, while Longyou will continue to host a round of the Chinese Rally Championship.
Harri "Rovis" Rovanperä is a Finnish rally driver who competed in the World Rally Championship from 1993 to 2006. He drove for SEAT (1997–00), Peugeot (2001–04), Mitsubishi (2005) and Red Bull Škoda Team (2006). Rovanperä was known as a loose surface specialist. He is the father of current World Rally Championship driver Kalle Rovanperä.
Ross Dunkerton OAM is an Australian rally driver. Dunkerton is a 5 time Australian Rally Champion and 2 time Asian Pacific Rally Champion. He was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2018.
Armin Schwarz is a German rally driver. He competed in the World Rally Championship from 1988 to 2005, winning the 1991 Rally Catalunya and taking six other podium finishes. Outside the WRC, he won the German Rally Championship (1987–88), the European Rally Championship (1996) and the "Rally Masters" event at the Race of Champions (2000).
Freddy Loix is a Belgian rally driver.
The Ford World Rally Team, also known as the Ford Motor Co. Team prior to 2005, is Ford Motor Company's full factory World Rally Championship team. In its current form, it has been a competitor since the 1997 season, when Ford Motor Company's motorsport arm selected the Malcolm Wilson Motorsport company to run its factory team, entering the Ford Escort World Rally Car. The new team took their first victory in the 1997 Acropolis Rally.
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.
The Citroën Total World Rally Team was the Citroën factory backed entry into the World Rally Championship, run by Citroën Racing.
Jarmo Lehtinen is a rally co-driver from Finland. He was the co-driver to former World Rally Championship driver Mikko Hirvonen and have scored 15 WRC wins competing under Ford World Rally Team and Citroën Total. As of 2019, he is current co-driver for M-Sport driver Teemu Sunninen
The FIA 2-Litre World Rally Cup was a sub-section of the World Rally Championship from 1993 to 1999. It involved mostly 1,600 cc (97.6 cu in) or 2,000 cc (122.0 cu in), naturally aspirated, front wheel drive cars. The series was discontinued due to high costs, and the new Super 2000 class was amalgamated into the Production World Rally Championship, whilst the 1600cc cars were generally modified for usage in the Super 1600 class, which formed the basis of the Junior World Rally Championship in 2001. The most successful manufacturer was SEAT, who won the title three times in a row with their SEAT Ibiza Kit Car.
Rick Bates is an Australian rally driver. He is the twin brother of the rally and racing driver, Neal Bates. Whilst Neal has achieved more success in the Australian Rally Championship, winning it four times, Rick has won two major cross country events in a nine-year span. The first was Panama-Alaska in 1997 and the next win was the Carrera Sudamericana in 2006.
References
- ↑ "World Rally Championship 1997 10. API Rally Australia Classification | Motorsport Stats". motorsportstats.com. Retrieved 2022-07-13.