World Rally Championship |
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Official Site: WRC.com
Wikipedia: World Rally Championship Page Sections History Article Index |
History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's World Rally Championship page on 21 September 2018, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The World Rally Championship (WRC) is a rallying series organised by the FIA, culminating with a champion driver, co-driver and manufacturer. The driver's world championship and manufacturer's world championship are separate championships, but based on the same point system. The series currently consists of 13 three-day events driven on surfaces ranging from gravel and tarmac to snow and ice. Each rally is split into 15–25 special stages which are run against the clock on closed roads.
The WRC was formed from well-known and popular international rallies, most of which had previously been part of the European Rally Championship or the International Championship for Manufacturers, and the series was first contested in 1973. The World Rally Car is the current car specification in the series. It evolved from Group A cars which replaced the banned Group B supercars. World Rally Cars are built on production 1.6-litre four-cylinder cars, but feature turbochargers, anti-lag systems, four-wheel-drive, sequential gearboxes, aerodynamic parts and other enhancements bringing the price of a WRC car to around US$1 million (€700,000 / £500,000).
The WRC features three support championships, the Junior World Rally Championship (JWRC, formerly the WRC Academy), the World Rally Championship-2 (WRC 2, formerly the Super 2000 World Rally Championship), and the World Rally Championship-3 (WRC-3, formerly the Production World Rally Championship) which are contested on the same events and stages as the WRC, but with different regulations. The WRC-2, WRC-3 and junior entrants race through the stages after the WRC drivers.
The World Rally Championship was formed from well-known international rallies, nine of which were previously part of the International Championship for Manufacturers (IMC), which was contested from 1970 to 1972. The 1973 World Rally Championship was the inaugural season of the WRC and began with the Monte Carlo Rally on January 19.
Alpine-Renault won the first manufacturer's world championship with its Alpine A110, after which Lancia took the title three years in a row with the Ferrari V6-powered Lancia Stratos HF, the first car designed and manufactured specifically for rallying. The first drivers' world championship was not awarded until 1979, although 1977 and 1978 seasons included an FIA Cup for Drivers, won by Italy's Sandro Munari and Finland's Markku Alén respectively. Sweden's Björn Waldegård became the first official world champion, edging out Finland's Hannu Mikkola by one point. Fiat took the manufacturers' title with the Fiat 131 Abarth in 1977, 1978 and 1980, Ford with its Escort RS1800 in 1979 and Talbot with its Sunbeam Lotus in 1981. Waldegård was followed by German Walter Röhrl and Finn Ari Vatanen as drivers' world champions.
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 3 December 2006 | Loeb vince il mondiale rally 2006  | Wikinotizie |
| 9 December 2008 | Rally: Citroën campione del mondo costruttori | Wikinotizie |
| 8 August 2012 | Red Bull to be announced as WRC promoter  | Matt Hubbard, Speedmonkey |
| 11 June 2013 | Stupid Spectators - A return to the bad old days of WRC? | Matt Hubbard, Speedmonkey |
| 26 June 2013 | WRC to be shown on ITV4 for the rest of 2013 | Matt Hubbard, Speedmonkey |
| 29 August 2013 | World Rally Championship - What’s The Problem? | Geoff Maxted, DriveWrite Automotive |