World Rally Championship Seasons
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World Rally Championship Seasons
The list of World Rally Championship seasons includes all seasons of the FIA World Rally Championship, from the inaugural 1973 season. Seasons References External links Seasons at World Rally ArchiveSeasons at RallyBase
{{World Rally Championship results *
Seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate an ...
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World Rally Championship
The World Rally Championship (abbreviated as WRC) 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 of closed roads. Drivers Sébastien Loeb, Sébastien Ogier, Juha Kankkunen, Tommi Mäkinen and Colin McRae all became WRC champions. Other drivers who became well known primarily through their WRC careers include Michèle Mouton, Henri Toivonen, Jari-Matti Latvala and Mikko Hirvonen. Rallies that have frequently appeared in the championship have included Monte Carlo Rally, Tour de Corse, Sanremo, Acropolis, Safari Rally, and national rallies of Great Britain, Finland, New Zealand, Au ...
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Björn Waldegård
Björn Waldegård (12 November 1943 – 29 August 2014) was a Swedish rally driver, and the winner of the inaugural World Rally Championship for drivers in 1979. His Swedish nickname was "Walle". Career Waldegård, who came from Rimbo, had a career that spanned four decades; he made his debut in 1962 and, after winning the Swedish Rally Championship in 1967 and '68, continued to compete at the top level until 1992 when a broken arm suffered during a crash in the 1992 Safari Rally forced his retirement. His first international victory, at the wheel of a Porsche 911, came on the 1969 Monte Carlo Rally, while his last came for Toyota on the 1990 Safari. It made him the oldest driver to win a World Rally Championship event, a record he retained until the 2022 Monte Carlo Rally. In the mid-1970s Waldegård took part in the newborn European Championship for Rallycross Drivers with a privately entered Porsche Carrera RSR. His best overall result was to become the Runner-up to Austri ...
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Guy Fréquelin
Guy Fréquelin (born 2 April 1945 at Langres) is a French former rally and sports car driver. Biography Perhaps Fréquelin's finest hour as a driver came when he finished runner-up only to Ari Vatanen, alongside then-navigator Jean Todt, at the wheel of a briefly competitive Sunbeam Lotus Talbot in the driver's classification of the 1981 World Rally Championship. It was during that year that he collected his only individual rally victory in the series, in Rally Argentina. Fréquelin was also part of a four-car Renault assault on the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1977 with their highly successful Alpine Renault A442B. As part of a team which included the French racing drivers, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, Jacques Laffite, Patrick Depailler, Patrick Tambay, Jean-Pierre Jaussaud, René Arnoux and Didier Pironi, as well as the English long distance expert Derek Bell, Fréquelin was named as the third driver for both the #7 Tambay/Jaussaud and the #16 Arnoux/Pironi machines. Neither cars were to ...
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Ari Vatanen
Ari Pieti Uolevi Vatanen (; born 27 April 1952) is a Finnish rally driver turned politician and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1999 to 2009. Vatanen won the World Rally Championship drivers' title in 1981 and the Paris Dakar Rally four times. In addition, Vatanen won the 1997 FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies. Since 2013 Vatanen has been the President of the Estonian Autosport Union. Racing career His debut year in rallying was 1970, and he debuted in the World Rally Championship at the 1974 1000 Lakes Rally. In that year he won the Nortti Rally in an Opel Ascona, beating Hannu Mikkola in the process, which brought him to wider attention. His first international rally was the 1975 Rothmans 747 Rally in Jamaica driving a Datsun 120Y. He placed 12th with co-driver Gerry Phillips. At the end of that season he was offered his first professional drive, in a Ford Escort RS1800, on the RAC Rally. He crashed out on the second day, but by then he had impressed Fo ...
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1981 World Rally Championship
The 1981 World Rally Championship was the ninth season of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) World Rally Championship (WRC). The season consisted of 12 rallies. While this number was the same as the previous year, one change was made to the schedule, replacing New Zealand with the Brazil. The 1981 World Rally Championship for Drivers was won by Ari Vatanen driving a Rothmans Rally Team Ford Escort RS1800, the only time a privateer team has won the Drivers' Championship until 2017. The Makes' Championship was won by Talbot with their Sunbeam Lotus. It also saw the beginning of a new era in the sport with the arrival of the Audi Quattro, the first four-wheel drive rally car. Initially regarded as too heavy and complex for rally stages, it proved its worth with three wins in its debut season, including a maiden victory for Michèle Mouton at the Rallye Sanremo, the only woman to win a WRC event. __TOC__ Teams and drivers Championships Events ...
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Walter Röhrl
Walter Röhrl (; born 7 March 1947) is a German rally and auto racing driver, with victories for Fiat, Opel, Lancia and Audi as well as Porsche, Ford and BMW. Röhrl has scored 14 victories over his career, with his notable achievements including winning the World Rally Championship twice: in 1980 in a Fiat Abarth and in 1982 while driving for Opel. He has also competed in other forms of motorsport, such as endurance racing, winning in the GTP +3.0 class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1981 with the Porsche System team. Röhrl also set the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb record in 1987 driving an Audi Sport Quattro S1 E2. He is often regarded as one of the greatest rally drivers of all time. Career Röhrl grew up as the youngest of three children of a stonemason in Regensburg, Bavaria, near Munich. His parents separated when he was ten years old. From then on he lived with his mother. After leaving school he completed a commercial education at Bishop's Ordinariate Regensburg. A ...
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1980 World Rally Championship
The 1980 World Rally Championship was the eighth season of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) World Rally Championship (WRC). The season consisted of 12 rallies. While this number was the same as the previous year, one change was made to the schedule, replacing Quebec with the Rally Codasur, marking the first WRC event to be held in South America. A new driver's champion was crowned, with Fiat backed German driver Walter Röhrl taking the championship convincingly while simultaneously earning for Fiat its third and final manufacturer's title. Finn Hannu Mikkola and Swede Björn Waldegård again battled to a one-point difference in the standings, though this time for second place overall, and this time with Mikkola coming out on top. Fiat's position in the standings was challenged by both Datsun and Ford, but neither could overcome the Italian company's initial lead, settling instead for second and third, respectively. 1980 also saw Mercedes-Benz's best and fi ...
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Datsun
Datsun (, ) was an automobile brand owned by Nissan. Datsun's original production run began in 1931. From 1958 to 1986, only vehicles exported by Nissan were identified as Datsun. Nissan phased out the Datsun brand in March 1986, but relaunched it in June 2013 as the brand for low-cost vehicles manufactured for emerging markets. Nissan considered phasing out the Datsun brand for a second time in 2019 and 2020, eventually discontinuing the struggling brand in April 2022. In 1931, DAT Motorcar Co. chose to name its new small car "Datson", a name which indicated the new car's smaller size when compared to the DAT's larger vehicle already in production. When Nissan took control of DAT in 1934, the name "Datson" was changed to "Datsun", because "son" also means "loss" (損 ''son'') in Japanese and also to honour the sun depicted in the national flag – thus the name ''Datsun'': . The Datsun name is internationally well known for the 510, Fairlady roadsters, and the Z and ZX c ...
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1979 World Rally Championship
The 1979 World Rally Championship was the seventh season of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) World Rally Championship (WRC). The season consisted of 12 rallies, one more than the previous year. The addition marked the return to New Zealand, an event which would remain on the schedule through today. 1979 marked the first season for the new World Rally Championship for Drivers. This successor to the preceding FIA Cup for Rally Drivers was aligned with the World Rally Championship for Manufacturers. Both championships used the same schedule of events for accumulating points toward the titles, although the point awarding methods were different for each. Manufacturers continued to receive points under the system adopted in 1977, in which points were garnered for both placement overall and placement within the car's group. Only the top finishing car from each manufacturer would garner points, and regardless of group finish, an overall finish of 10th or better was ...
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Hannu Mikkola
Hannu Olavi Mikkola (24 May 1942 − 25 February 2021) was a Finnish champion world rally driver. He was a seven-time winner of the 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland and won the RAC Rally in Great Britain four times. Career Mikkola's rally career spanned 31 years, starting with a Volvo PV544 in 1963, but his most successful period was during the 1970s and 1980s. The 1970s saw Mikkola a frontrunner in many international events, usually in a Ford Escort. He became the first overseas driver to win the East African Safari Rally in 1972, partnered by Gunnar Palm and again in a Ford Escort. In 1979 he made a serious challenge at the World Rally Championship title, ultimately finishing runner-up, only one point behind champion Björn Waldegård. Mikkola was joined by Swedish co-driver Arne Hertz in 1977 and the pair were very quickly a force to be reckoned with, winning the British Rally Championship in 1978 in an Escort. The Mikkola/Hertz partnership lasted for thirteen years, through t ...
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Jean-Pierre Nicolas
Jean-Pierre Nicolas (born 22 January 1945) is a retired French professional rally driver who competed mainly in the 1970s. Nicolas took five WRC event wins in the World Rally Championship. His best result in the drivers' championship was second with 31 points, after Markku Alén (53) and ahead of Hannu Mikkola (30), in the 1978 ''FIA Cup for Drivers''.RallyBase – 1978 FIA Cup for Rally Drivers
Nicolas was born in
Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of sout ...
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Markku Alén
Markku Allan Alén (born 15 February 1951) is a Finland, Finnish former Rallying, rally and race car driver. He drove for Fiat, Lancia, Subaru World Rally Team, Subaru and Toyota Team Europe, Toyota in the World Rally Championship, and held the List of World Rally Championship records, record for most stage wins (801) in the series, until Sébastien Loeb overtook it at the 2011 Rally Catalunya. Alén's phrase "now maximum attack" became well-known. Alén never won the world championship itself, despite being for a long time the driver with the most wins to his credit. However, he did win the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, FIA Cup for Drivers in 1978 World Rally Championship season, 1978, the precursor to the List of World Rally Championship Drivers' Champions, World Championship for Drivers established in 1979 World Rally Championship season, 1979. In 1986 World Rally Championship season, 1986, he was the world champion for eleven days, until Peugeot Sport, Peugeot' ...
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