The Japan Times - Five things about the 2025 World Rally Championship

- Neuville 'should be up there' -

After five times finishing as runner-up, the bespectacled Belgian finally took a step up in 2024 to claim the title at the season-ending rally in Japan alongside co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe.

At 36, Neuville is no spring chicken but he claims to be as hungry for a second title as he was for the first.

"Definitely. Once you taste it you want more," he told Motorsport.com.

"It is always like this with everything. For sure, what I want to do is give it everything like we have done in the other years. If everything comes together we should be up there.

"The pressure to perform, the pressure to deliver for the team and the pressure to be the best is still the same."

Neuville remains with Hyundai who will be looking to rest the manufacturers' title from Toyota.

- Rovanpera returns -

After winning two successive titles, Kalle Rovanpera took a semi-sabbatical last season, although he still won four of the seven rallies he took part in.

But the 24-year-old Finn, who became the youngest ever world champion when he won the title in 2022 at the age of 22 years and 1 day, is back with Toyota for a full season and eager to reclaim his crown.

"If I’m lining up, it's to win and bring points to the team," he said. "My ambition hasn't changed. I'm here to win the world championship title."

The other main contenders will likely be fellow Toyota driver Elfyn Evans and Neuville's Hyundai teammates Ott Tanak, the 2019 champion, and, possibly, Adrien Fourmaux.

- Ogier challenge' -

Eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier will again be competing for Toyota on a part-time basis which rules out his hopes of a ninth title but leaves him as a dangerous outlier in every event he's involved in.

This weekend Ogier, who hails from nearby Gap, will take part in his 16th Monte Carlo Rally where he is a record nine-time winner, although only eight of those came in the WRC.

"Even after many starts, this rally never gets any easier," the 41-year-old told Auto Hebdo.

"I always approach it with respect for the challenge and, in a way, with a bit of fear, because you know you'll be facing unpredictable conditions. It's about trying to manage the risk, even more so than on other rallies."

- Saudi debut -

The WRC becomes the latest sporting event to reach into the deep pockets of Saudi Arabia as the calendar expands by one race to 14 in 2025. Saudi Arabia, which already hosts the annual Dakar Rally at the start of the year, will hold the season finale at the end of November.

Africa keeps its event with the Rally Safari Kenya in March.

Estonia returns to the calendar while Canary Islands and Paraguay make their first appearance. Croatia and Poland have been dropped.

- Monte Carlo or Bust -

It all starts on Thursday in Monte Carlo which is the oldest event on the schedule having first been run in 1911 when 23 cars set off from 11 different locations in Europe to converge on the principality.

Frenchman Henri Rougier, a pioneering aviator, won the event in a Turcat-Mery 25 HP, although victory depended not just on speed but also on items such as passenger comfort, the look of the car and the state in which it arrived in Monte Carlo.

The controversy that followed was nothing compared to the howls of discontent that followed in 1966 when the first four finishers, who included Timo Makinen and Paddy Hopkirk, who had won the previous two editions, and Rauno Aaltonen who would win in 1967, were all disqualified. The reason? Their Mini-Coopers were fitted with the incorrect non-dipping headlamps.

The early years of the rally were set on celluloid in Ken Annakin's 1969 comedy 'Monte Carlo or Bust' starring Tony Curtis, Susan Hampshire and Terry-Thomas.

Y.Kato--JT