Tommi Mäkinen
It was the second victory of the 1998 season for Richard Burns and his co-driver Robert Reid and saw Tommi Mäkinen score a hat-trick of Drivers' championships after his closest rival Carlos Sainz, just 300 metres from the finish and running in fourth with just the final special stage to go, suffered a huge upset, his Corolla struck by engine failure at Margam, thus surrendering his title to Mäkinen.