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Top five world rally moments

Peugeot, Ford, Subaru and Mitsubishi all took victories; five drivers were in with a tilt at the championship with two rounds to go, but it was Marcus Gronholm and Richard Burns hitting the season-closing Rally Great Britain with title hopes intact. Burns won in the Welsh forests, but Gronholm did enough to end the four-year reign of Tommi Makinen

Autosport.com looks back at five memorable moments from the 2000 season...

All manner of weirdness kicks off in Australia... The ball bearing-like top surface on the Rally Australia stages means nobody wants to run first on the road. Third or fourth starting the final day is regarded as the optimum position and the top drivers will stop at nothing to bag one of those slots. Works cars trundle through each day's final stage like tractors on an A-road, Carlos Sainz is excluded for actually stopping and waiting before a flying finish and Richard Burns, ahem, 'discovers' a mystery puncture at the start of the final day. Fascinating stuff, but farcical too - and not the greatest ever advert for World Championship Rallying.

Francois Delecour tries getting physical with Peugeot team mate Gilles Panizzi on the Sanremo Rally. Off the back of a dominant Corsica Rally victory, Panizzi is also leading Italy's 'rally of the race tracks', but fiery Frenchman Delecour accuses him of illegal recceing beforehand and has to be held back by his Peugeot engineers at a service halt. Panizzi stares hard into his bowl of pasta, then goes on to win his second tarmac event in a row. Come season's end, Delecour is given his marching orders by Pug.

Richard Burns completes a Network Q Rally Great Britain hat-trick. The Englishman came into the season finale with a slim chance of wresting the world title away from Peugeot's Marcus Gronholm, but had to fight back after a first day off. The title slipped from his grasp, but victory in Cardiff made him only the third man in history to win three consecutive runnings of Britain's round of the World Rally Championship.

Colin McRae has a miracle escape in Corsica. The Ford ace makes a mistake on one of Corsica's unforgiving corners and flies off the asphalt and into a ravine. The Scot is trapped in his Focus for half and hour, but is lucky to escape with nothing more serious than a broken cheekbone. Just two weeks later, McRae is back in action on Sanremo, another high-speed asphalt event, and showing that the near-miss has taken away none of his speed and determination.

Marcus Gronholm dominates in Finland. The quite and unassuming Finn had never driven a full programme with a top-line works outfit before, but Peugeot's gamble was fully justified by his dominant performance on the 'Finnish Grand Prix'. From stage one until the finish, Gronholm was never headed - his performance laid the foundations for an unexpected, but fully deserved first world title.

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