The 2005 World Rally Championship season was the 33rd season in the FIA World Rally Championship. The season began on January 21 with the Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo and ended on November 13 with the Telstra Rally Australia.
In the drivers' world championship, Citroën Total's Sébastien Loeb successfully defended his title, finishing a record 56 points ahead of Subaru's Petter Solberg and Peugeot's Marcus Grönholm. Loeb also set several other records during the season. He won ten world rallies, beating the previous record of six held by him (2004) and Didier Auriol (1992). He also took six consecutive wins, beating Timo Salonen's 20-year-old record of four. Peugeot's Markko Märtin retired after his co-driver Michael Park was fatally injured in their crash at the Wales Rally GB.
Citroën took the manufacturers' title for the third year in a row, well ahead of Subaru and Ford. PSA Peugeot Citroën still went ahead with their plan to withdraw both Citroën and Peugeot from the series after the season. More blows to manufacturer involvement in the series followed when Mitsubishi and Škoda announced the withdrawal of their factory teams. However, the 2006 season would see Citroën and Škoda continue as the semi-works teams Kronos Citroën and Red Bull Škoda Team, respectively.
Read more about 2005 World Rally Championship Season: Regulation Changes, Michael Park, Calendar, Events
Famous quotes containing the words world, rally and/or season:
“It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt to themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I ... once witnessed more ardent emotions between men at an Elks’ Rally in Pasadena than they could ever have felt for the type of woman available to an Elk.”
—Anita Loos (1888–1981)
“As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)