page_title: 2020 World Rally Championship
section_title: Opening rounds
hierarchical_section_title: 2020 World Rally Championship / Season report / Opening rounds
caption_attribution_description: English: Lappi at Rally Sweden 2020.
context_page_description: The 2020 FIA World Rally Championship is the forty-eighth season of the World Rally Championship, an auto racing competition recognised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile as the highest class of international rallying. Teams and crews are competing in seven rallies for the World Rally Championships for Drivers, Co-drivers and Manufacturers. Crews are free to compete in cars complying with World Rally Car and Group R regulations; however, only manufacturers competing with World Rally Cars homologated under regulations introduced in 2017 are eligible to score points in the Manufacturers' championship. The championship began in January 2020 with the Rallye Monte Carlo and is due to conclude in November 2020 with Ypres Rally. The series is supported by the World Rally Championship-2, World Rally Championship-3 and Junior World Rally Championship categories at selected events.
  Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja are the defending Drivers' and Co-drivers' Champions, having secured their maiden titles at the 2019 Rally Catalunya. Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT, the team Tänak and Järveoja compete for, are the defending Manufacturers' Champions.
context_section_description: The 2020 FIA World Rally Championship started in Monaco. The sport saw a series of crew changes in the off-season, which included reigning world champions Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja moving to Hyundai. Tänak and Järveoja's title defence started poorly when they suffered a high-speed crash on the fourth stage of the rally, which saw their Hyundai i20 flying off a 40 m (131.2 ft) high cliff at 180 km/h (111.8 mph), rolling end-over-end through a series of trees and landing on the road below; both Tänak and Järveoja walked away uninjured. Following the crash, Hyundai's hopes rode on the shoulders of Thierry Neuville and Nicolas Gilsoul. Despite holding the lead on Thursday night, Friday saw the Toyota crews of Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia their and teammates Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin take the lead. The lead would swing backwards and forwards throughout the rally until Neuville and Gilsoul won seven out of the eight final stage—including winning the Power Stage—to record their first win in Monte Carlo.
  As championship leaders, Neuville and Gilsoul became the first crew on the road in Sweden. This saw them struggle throughout the weekend as their position meant they swept loose gravel away from the faster road base underneath, which was further complicated by the rally being shortened due to a lack of snow. They rally was eventually won by Evans and Martin. The Toyota crew dominated the rally, winning five stages out of nine, to take victory—the second for Evans, the first for Martin—and the lead both drivers' and co-drivers' standings for the first time in their careers. Their team-mate Kalle Rovanperä recorded his first stage win at the sport's highest level when he and co-driver Jonne Halttunen won the Power Stage. Rovanperä and Halttunen also achieved their maiden podium finish. At the age of nineteen, Rovanperä became the youngest driver ever to claim a WRC podium finish.
  As the championship continued on to Latin America, the world began to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the Rally Mexico began as planned, the final leg of the rally was cancelled to allow teams enough time to return to their home bases before travel restrictions came into effect. This meant the rally was shortened to two legs. Tänak and Järveoja were leading the first leg until suspension damage saw them drop over forty seconds. Neuville and Gilsoul were running third overall, but they had to retire from the day with electrical problem. Hyundai's third entry of Dani Sordo and Carlos del Barrio suffered a radiator pipe issue on the morning loop which lost them five minutes, and they ultimately retired with a terminal engine fault. Esapekka Lappi and Janne Ferm also retired when their Fiesta caught fire. Ogier and Ingrassia enjoyed a trouble-free weekend and won their first rally of the season. With a consistent performance in the early season, the six-time world champions took an early lead in the championships. The result also saw Toyota expand their lead in the manufacturers' championship, twenty-one points ahead of defending manufacturer champions Hyundai.
caption: A lack of snow forced the Rally Sweden to be shortened.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "90", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2784", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1479"}