Rally Italia Sardegna

The WRC Rally Italia Sardegna is the sixth round of the 2023 WRC calendar. It’s one of the founding events of the World Rally Championship.

It’s the third of eight gravel events on the calendar. The event is one of the most challenging gravel tests of the year, with fast, narrow stages on abrasive roads.

Though it’s an original event from the first official season, it debuted decades before the inaugural WRC season in 1973.

Rally Italia Sardegna began as the Rallye Internazionale di Sanremo in 1928. It used the French word for rally instead of Italian because of the Rallye Automobile Monte Carlo. Romanian driver Ernest Urdareanu won the first two rallies.

After success in 1929, new organizers moved the rally to be a street race through Sanremo, a coastal city in northwestern Italy. The inaugural rally in Sanremo, the Circuito Automobilistico Sanremo, occurred in 1937.

A break around and after World War II preceded the rally changing its name to the Rallye Femminile Perla di Sanremo from 1952-1956. There was another five-year gap before the rally returned as the Rallye dei Fiori (“Rally of the Flowers”) in 1961. It’s continued every year since.

The Rally Sanremo joined the International Championship for Manufacturers from 1970-1972. This was a precursor series to the WRC. The event stayed on the WRC schedule for the next 30 years.

The 1981 event featured the first and only time a woman had won a WRC event when French driver Michèle Mouton took the win in an Audi Quattro.

The rally became a point of controversy in 1986. French manufacturer Peugeot’s factory team was disqualified for using illegal side skirts.

The team had used the same configuration for previous rallies that season without any problems and passed pre-rally scrutineering for that event. Peugeot remained disqualified after an appeal.

The FIA later decided the exclusion was illegal and all race results were annulled.

That event preceded a run of success for Lancia. The Italian manufacturer won six straight Rallye Sanremo events.

The 1990s saw a mix of winning drivers and manufacturers, with Ford, Toyota, Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Peugeot all taking victories. That variety continued through to the 2000s.

The rally changed in 2004 from Rallye Sanremo to Rally Italia Sardegna on the island of Sardinia, which continues today.

The one non-WRC event in 2010 was when the Intercontinental Rally Challenge was the premier class.

Nine-time WRC champion Sébastien Loeb and eight-time champion Sébastien Ogier are tied for the most wins since the move to Sardinia in 2004, with four each.