World Rally Championship 2002

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The 2002 season of the rally world championship was the 30th edition of the iridata series organized by the FIA; began on January 18 with the Rally of Monte Carlo and ended on November 17 with the Rally of Great Britain.

Summary
The Iridata series was again supported by the world championship for production cars (PWRC), dedicated to the Group N cars strictly derived from the series, which from this year planned eight appointments during the season, and the Junior WRC (JWRC) championship, established in 2001, which assigned the trophy to the drivers who played in the Super 1600 class and was instead constituted by six stages. FIA Cup teams were abolished.

The driver's championship won the Finnish Marcus Grönholm, at his second world title after the one obtained in 2000, at the wheel of a Peugeot 206 WRC, which dominated the season ahead of the final podium the Norwegian Petter Solberg, on Subaru Impreza WRC2002, and Spanish Carlos Sainz leading a Ford Focus RS WRC 02, spaced 40 and 41 points respectively. The title builders were again won by the French sculptor Peugeot Total, his third consecutive gold medal and the fifth of his story, in front of the official teams Ford and Subaru. Both crowns were won in advance in New Zealand.

The PWRC championship was won by the Malaysian Karamjit Singh on Proton Pert of the Petronas EON Racing Team, while in the Junior WRC race trophy, the Spanish driver Daniel Solà took charge of a Citroën Saxo S1600.

Calendar
The championship, with its fourteen events in as many nations, touched Europe (ten races), Oceania (two), Africa and South America (one race each).

Changes in the calendar
The Portugal Rally was not included in the 2002 calendar, in its place the German Rally, positioned at the end of August as a tenth seasonal appointment.
The other major changes were the move of the Tour de Corse from October to March and the Cyprus Rally from June to April.

Changes in the Regulation
Regarding the 2001 season, changes were made in the sports regulation.

Sports regulations
The teams participating in the constructing championship no longer had to designate the two cars eligible to mark the points, they could therefore deploy three crews and those who had obtained the best two rankings would have contributed to the points of the league brands.
A further novelty was the starting order of the first 15 crews in each stage of the world: during the first day (Friday) the cars will leave in agreement with the ranking of the world current drivers (as in the past season) but in the second and third fraction (Saturday and Sunday) they will leave in reverse order regarding the ranking of the rally in force at the end of the previous day.
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