The WRC hits 500

This really wasn't how it was supposed to be. Standing on the road into the Digne, officials from the newly former World Rally Championship watched as the police arrived to quell an angry mob. Of competitors.

Round one, 499 rounds ago, was the 1973 Monte Carlo Rally. And, midway through the Burzet stage a Ford Capri spun and wedged itself between the two snowbanks. Around 150 crews were following and had no chance of getting around the stricken car. So the Automobile Club de Monaco excluded them all.

That was when the police were called. Having extricated themselves from the stage, the 150 or so excluded crews decided to block the road into Digne to bring WRC round one to a halt entirely.

It didn't work.

After an inauspicious start on round one, things didn't improve much on round two in Sweden - where the organisers decided to ban studded tyres. Some crews could barely get their cars off the line, let alone through anything resembling a corner.

Where it all began: Jean-Claude Andreut on the way to Monte victory in 1973 © LAT

Fortunately, things have improved since then. And, 497 rallies and 39 years after the slippery Swedish, last weekend saw the 500th round of the FIA World Rally Championship.

For the dyscalculia sufferers among you, last week's Rally Finland was the 500th event in the history of the championship.

The World Rally Championship had, for all intents and purposes, been running for three years prior to 1973 anyway, with the sport's governing body - then the Commission Sportive Internationale - running the International Manufacturers' Championship from 1970-1972. All nine of the 1972 IMC rounds were drafted into the inaugural WRC calendar with four more added.

The 1960s had been a period of significant change in the sport of rallying. The decade prior to that had given rallying a chance to revive after the ravages of the Second World War. And as the European economy slowly revitalised itself, rallying found its feet and became enormously popular across the continent.

And those events became increasingly competitive. The sixties were ushered in with the arrival of the first special stage on the RAC Rally and out with cars such as the Alpine A110 shunning a well-trodden route of mass production-based competition cars. And, in between those times, anybody who had witnessed BMC's competitions department in action was left in little doubt that the professional era was upon world rallying.

Having made the decision to attach a 'world' title to its championship for manufacturers in 1973, a truly world crisis hit CSI's new series hard in year two. The Middle Eastern oil producing countries took a dim view of America's decision to supply arms to Israel and placed an embargo on the flow of fuel in late '73. The first two rounds of the 1974 were cancelled and, in the end, only eight of the scheduled 11 rallies would run.

It wasn't all bad news at that time. At the same time that oil began to flow around the world more freely, it began to flow quickly through the twin 48mm Weber carbs on arguably world rallying's first supercar: the Stratos.

The gorgeous Stratos saw plenty of success in the 1970s © LAT

Lancia's Fulvia had given the mighty Italian victory in the final year of the IMC, in 1972. While Cesare Fiorio was busy borrowing and fitting Ferrari Dino engines into the back of a beautiful Bertone design, the Alpine stole the march and took rallying's first title in 1973. That was the Renault-engined car's only season-long success.

From then on, the Stratos took hold to carry the Turin workforce to three successive championship titles. And when the superiority of the Stratos faded, its successor also came from a familiar factory in Northern Italy, with the 131 Abarth.

More important than the Italian dominance of the early years of world rallying was the arrival of a drivers' championship in 1979.

And, just as the makes race arrived amid Monte controversy, so did the drivers' title tilt. Bjorn Waldegaard was leading and looking good to win round one for Ford and himself... right up until a couple of rocks found their way onto the road over the Col de Turini. Strangely, they weren't there when Frenchman Bernard Darniche passed shortly afterwards. Having been six minutes up, Waldegaard lost the rally to Darniche's private Stratos by six seconds.

While Fiat had taken a sabbatical in 1979, Ford had gone full bore with the Escort and Waldegaard became the first person to win a World Rally Championship, defeating his team-mate Hannu Mikkola by just one point.

So, 75 rallies after it all started, the WRC was ready to crown two champions.

Audi brought four-wheel-drive to the stages © LAT

Fittingly, the centenary event for the WRC was the 1982 Monte Carlo Rally, won by Walter Rohrl in an Ascona 400. 100 rallies in, however, and the sport had changed even more dramatically, after a couple of radical thinkers in Ingolstadt elected to send drive to the front and rear wheels in something they called Quattro.

The second century of WRC events would be by far the most tumultuous in its history as Group B came and went with savage power and fatal consequences. First Peugeot then Austin Rover, Lancia and Ford all joined Audi to create cars that were simply too fast. The 159th round of the WRC in December 1986 would be the last for Group B.

By the time the sport hit 200, Group A regulations were well and truly exploited, leaving behind the humdrum early days of 1987. And the Italians were very definitely back. The Delta, first created in fire-breathing Group B form, was tamed and tuned to Group A and would go on to become the joint most successful model of car in the history of the WRC, winning 46 rounds - including Miki Biasion's success on the 200th.

The halfway point of the WRC's journey from rounds one to 500 is Francois Delecour's third win of the 1993 season, the Catalunya Rally.

The triple century is celebrated by a flying Scot in a Subaru. Colin McRae's victory on the 1998 Acropolis Rally was not only the 300th round of the WRC, it would also be the 1995 world champion's final victory in an Impreza.

The World Rally Car rules opened the door for the likes of Hyundai © LAT

Again, the sport had moved on through technical change, with World Rally Cars arriving at the turn of 1997. WRCs broke down the barriers of entry to the world championship, allowing manufacturers to essentially cut and shut from the range. Providing 25,000 or more of the desired model were produced by the manufacturer annually, then four-wheel drive and a turbocharged engine could be fitted - with 20 examples required by the FIA for year-on-year homologation.

World rallying was opened to the masses, allowing Skoda to shun its perennial tag of class-winner by building the Octavia WRC; SEAT was another to come with its Cordoba; Hyundai and the Accent - all competing without a turbo, four-wheel drive roadgoing derivative of the competition car.

One manufacturer exploited the World Rally Car rules better than anybody, though. And that one manufacturer has become utterly associated with one man: Citroen and Sebastien Loeb.

Loeb's first win - in Germany, 2002, was the 357th round of the world championship. The Frenchman won the 400th in Argentina, 2005 - by then already well on his way to a successful defence of his maiden world title.

Between rounds 357 and 499, the name Loeb has appeared alongside 72 of those rallies in the 'winner' column.

Of the 142 WRC rounds runs between Argentina, 2005 and New Zealand this year, Loeb has been on the podium 106 times.

In 500 rounds, the WRC has created four-time champion heroes in the shape of Juha Kankkunen and Tommi Makinen; it's made four drivers champions two times (Walter Rohrl, Miki Biasion, Carlos Sainz and Marcus Gronholm) - it even made Markku Alen a champion for 11 days at the end of 1986 - before his Sanremo win was rendered pointless (and thus doesn't count in our 500). But nothing prepared the WRC for Loeb.

Prior to Finland, 38-year-old has won 45 per cent of the events he's started, set fastest times on 844 stages and bagged 1426 points.

Last week was all about the sport's really big number. It took 39 years and 499 rallies to get there. So who would win WRC round 500 in Finland...? Loeb... And rightly so.

For a gallery of the WRC's greatest machines, click here