A crowded event indeedThere will be a record number of entrants in this year's Swedish Rally, as an impressive total of 173 starters have entered as participants in the two parallel races of the event: the World Rally Championship and the Swedish Rally Championship event.
"We
are of course enormously happy for this," declared Bertil Klarin, Clerk of the Course. "And not least for Swedish rallying."
Thursday January 3rd was the last day to file for the World Rally Championship event Uddeholm Swedish Rally, and the following day was the same for the Swedish Championship event. Then a further 107 drivers entered, bringing the total to 173 drivers overall.
"We have statistics back to 1973 and we never met such an interest for the rally," Bertil Klarin continued.
"In 1988 we had 158 drivers as the top number up 'till today. The national Championship event will be the second out of four events in 2008. The first rally will be Bergslagsrallyt on January 18-19.
Even that rally has met with a great interest and has the best entering number since many years - 100 drivers," he detailed.
The Swedish Championship part of the Uddeholm Swedish Rally starts on Friday evening February 8th at 08:00 with the Super Special Stage at Färjestadstravet in Karlstad, a part of this year's Rally Village. After that opening stage the National elite will be driving the last three stages on Saturday as well as on Sunday.
Among the National entries we will find former double winner of the Swedish Rally, Mats Jonsson, the reigning Swedish Rally Champion in class A8. He will meet drivers such as Eddie Hörbing and Dick Wicksell, without forgetting those who also are entered in the WRC event - Swedish drivers such as PG Andersson, Daniel Carlsson, Oscar Svedlund and many more.
Source Swedish Rally
