The 2008 European Rally Championship season was the 56th season of the FIA European Rally Championship. Italian driver Luca Rossetti won 4 of the 9 rallies to claim his first European rally championship title.
The calendar of the 2008 season consisted of only 9 events, after the ELPA Rally not taking place in that year. The remaining events were unchanged from the previous year. [1]
Round | Date | Event | Winner ERC |
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1 | 4– 6 April | ![]() | ![]() |
2 | 18–20 April | ![]() | ![]() |
3 | 22–24 May | ![]() | ![]() |
4 | 6– 8 June | ![]() | ![]() |
5 | 27–28 June | ![]() | ![]() |
6 | 11–13 July | ![]() | ![]() |
7 | 1–2 August | ![]() | ![]() |
8 | 22–24 August | ![]() | ![]() |
9 | 17–19 October | ![]() | ![]() |
For the final classification in a rally, the winner was awarded 10 points, the runner-up 8 and the third placed driver 6. Drivers ranked 4 to 8 got 5–4–3–2–1 point(s). Additionally, the top three of every leg got 3–2–1 point(s). Only drivers who participated in least 6 events qualified for the championship ranking. [2]
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Marcus Ulf Johan Grönholm is a Finnish former rally and rallycross driver, being part of a family of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland lineage. His son, Niclas Grönholm, is an upcoming FIA World Rallycross Championship driver. Grönholm's nicknames are either "Bosse" or "Magic Marcus". Gronholm is one of the most successful WRC drivers of all time, ranking third in rally wins (34), and winning two championships, in 2000 and 2002. After Peugeot withdrew from the World Rally Championship, Grönholm moved to Ford for the 2006 season and placed second in the drivers' world championship, losing out to Sébastien Loeb by one point. The next year he again placed second, four points behind Loeb. He and his co-driver Timo Rautiainen retired from rallying after the 2007 season but returned to the championship in 2009 driving a private Subaru for a short period of time, and in the 2019 World Rally Championship where he competed in a Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT-maintained Toyota Yaris under the GRX Team banner.
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