Rally Drivers With Extraordinary Versatility

Compare Röhrl’s 1982 drivers’ title in the rear-wheel-drive Opel Ascona 400 with his 1984 Monte Carlo win for Audi in the quattro. Opel won the drivers’ title while Audi took the constructors’ title in 1982. Watching Röhrl switch sides of that contest makes the difference between the two cars tangible.

Start with Mouton and Fabrizia Pons winning Sanremo for Audi in 1981, then follow their 1982 wins in Portugal, Greece, and Brazil. The Acropolis in Greece is a good counterpoint to Sanremo, showing the same crew taking the quattro to victory on a different kind of event.

Blomqvist won at home in a front-wheel-drive Saab before winning the 1984 world title in Audi’s four-wheel-drive quattro with Björn Cederberg. Put the two Swedish Rally eras side by side to see what a change in driven wheels meant for the same driver on familiar winter roads.

Mikkola and Gunnar Palm won the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally in a Ford Escort. Years later Mikkola won the 1987 Safari in an Audi quattro. Those two results give you a route into his career through long, punishing events in very different cars.

Vatanen took the 1981 world title in a rear-wheel-drive Escort with David Richards. Compare that campaign with his 1987 Dakar win alongside Bernard Giroux in a Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 Grand Raid. The two results show him applying his pace to very different distances and machinery.

Start with Kankkunen’s first WRC win, the 1985 Safari in a Toyota Celica. His next stretch is a study in changing cars at the top level. He won titles with Peugeot in 1986 and Lancia in 1987 before taking his fourth title with Toyota in 1993.

Sainz won Rally Finland in a Toyota in 1990 on his way to the first of two WRC titles. Then follow his four Dakar victories in cars from Volkswagen, Peugeot, MINI, and Audi. The 2024 win alongside Lucas Cruz in the Audi RS Q e-tron is a useful comparison with his earlier Toyota stage-rally days.

Start with McRae’s 1995 title in the Subaru Impreza, then try the 1999 Safari, which he won in a Ford Focus with Nicky Grist. The contrast puts a new car in the picture and gives you a rough, long-distance round to set beside the title campaign.

Loeb and Daniel Elena won nine world titles together across three Citroën models. Then jump to Monte Carlo in 2022. Loeb won with Isabelle Galmiche in the Ford Puma Rally1. Winning there with a new car and co-driver is a compact example of his adaptability.

Ogier and co-driver Julien Ingrassia took four consecutive titles with Volkswagen from 2013 to 2016. They won again in 2021 in the Toyota Yaris WRC. The two cars came from different eras of World Rally Car regulations, so this is a chance to compare how the same crew adapted to different machinery.

The 2003 WRC title in a Subaru is one place to start with Solberg. Then try his run to the inaugural world rallycross title in 2014. Rallycross puts several drivers on the same track at once, so it makes an instructive change from the timed stages of his rally championship.

Compare two of Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen’s runs in the Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 during 2022. Rovanperä won six of the eight stages on the opening day in wet Croatia, and he led a Toyota one-two on the much faster roads of Rally Estonia. They make a quick introduction to his pace with different surfaces and changing grip.

Auriol is worth following through two chapters at Toyota. He took the 1994 drivers’ title in a Celica, then helped Toyota win the 1999 manufacturers’ title in the Corolla alongside Carlos Sainz. Watch that later campaign if you want to see why consistent points from both crews mattered as much as a single driver’s headline result.