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 13 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 (220 mi) of closed roads.
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 has competed in the first two seasons alongside 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.
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". Grönholm is one of the most successful WRC drivers of all time, ranking third in rally wins (30), 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.
Coral Taylor is an Australian female rally co-driver. Taylor comes from a strong rallying family, she is the daughter of veteran rally driver Norm Fritter, married to former Australian Championship driver Mark Taylor and mother to emerging driver Molly Taylor.
Jari-Matti Latvala is a Finnish rally driver who has competed in the World Rally Championship (WRC). His co-driver for most of his career was Miikka Anttila, who co-drove for Latvala between the 2003 Rallye Deutschland and 2019 Rally Catalunya. He is well known for his aggressive driving style, which earns him many plaudits, and comparisons to the late Colin McRae. With 18 event victories in the WRC, he is the most successful driver to not have won a championship. Latvala is also the driver with the most World Rally starts in the sport which he achieved in 2019, 17 years after his debut.
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.
Since its introduction to motorsport in the early 1970s, Toyota has been involved in a number of motorsport activities, most notably in Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar, sports car racing, various off road rallies and the WRC. Currently, Toyota participates in the Toyota Racing Series, Super Formula, Formula Three, Formula Drift, NHRA, USAC, Super GT, NASCAR, the WRC and the WEC.
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.
Esapekka Lappi is a Finnish rally driver. He is the 2012 Finnish Rally Champion, 2014 European Rally Champion and the 2016 WRC-2 Champion.He now drives for Hyundai Motorsport
Molly Anne Taylor is an Australian rally car driver. She is the 2016 Australian Rally Champion, the first and only woman to win the Australian Rally Championship and the youngest regardless of gender, and the 2021 Extreme E Champion.
The Toyota Yaris WRC is a World Rally Car designed by Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT to compete in the World Rally Championship. The car is based on the Vitz-based XP130 Toyota Yaris, and is the first car Toyota have competed with in the WRC since withdrawing from the championship at the end of the 1999 season to focus on their Le Mans Prototype and Formula One programmes. The car was driven by Sébastien Ogier, Elfyn Evans, Ott Tänak, Kalle Rovanperä and Takamoto Katsuta.
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.
The Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team is a competitor of the World Rally Championship (WRC) based in Finland, serving as the entry for the car manufacturer Toyota. Its team principal is former WRC driver Jari-Matti Latvala and its drivers for 2023 include reigning champion Kalle Rovanperä, alongside Elfyn Evans, Takamoto Katsuta and Sébastien Ogier. The team made its debut during the 2017 season, where it entered the Toyota Yaris WRC.
The 2018 FIA World Rally Championship was the 46th season of the World Rally Championship, an auto racing championship recognised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) as the highest class of international rallying. Teams and crews were competing in thirteen events—starting with the Monte Carlo Rally in January and finishing with Rally Australia in November—for the World Rally Championships for Drivers, Co-drivers and Manufacturers. Crews were free to compete in cars complying with World Rally Car and Group R regulations; however, only Manufacturers competing with 2017-specification World Rally Cars were eligible to score points in the Manufacturers' championship. The series were once again supported by the World Rally Championship-2 and World Rally Championship-3 categories at every round and by the Junior World Rally Championship at selected rounds.
The 2019 FIA World Rally Championship was the forty-seventh season of the World Rally Championship, an auto racing championship recognised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) as the highest class of international rallying. Teams and crews competed in fourteen events for the World Rally Championships for Drivers, Co-drivers and Manufacturers. Crews were free to compete in cars complying with World Rally Car and Group R regulations; however, only Manufacturers competing with World Rally Cars homologated under regulations introduced in 2017 were eligible to score points in the Manufacturers' championship. The series was once again supported by the World Rally Championship-2 category at every round, which was split into 2 classifications: the World Rally Championship-2 Pro for manufacturer entries and the World Rally Championship-2 for private entries, and by the Junior World Rally Championship at selected events. The World Rally Championship-3 was discontinued in 2018.
Janne Ferm is a Finnish rally co-driver. He is currently teamed with Esapekka Lappi and is competing for Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT in the World Rally Championship.
Takamoto Katsuta is a Japanese rally driver. He currently rallies for the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT NG in the World Rally Championship. He rose to prominence after taking a surprise victory in the WRC-2 class at the 2018 Rally Sweden. He achieved his first World Rally Championship podium in 2021 Safari Rally, scoring second place.
Australian