We missed Rally Norway last year, when the FIA's rotation system demanded that the championship's winter rally would be run in Sweden, but we are back again in Norway and by all accounts the conditions are expected to be absolutely classic. Once again there are only four registered world championship teams, eight cars, like in Ireland. The only driver change at this level is that Chris Atkinson's car will now be driven by the Russian Evgeniy Novikov. This will be 18 year old Novikov's first rally in a World Rally Car, but snow is no novelty for him. On his very first rally, a winter time national cup event in Russia, he won outright, at the age of 15. Additionally there are the Production Car World Championship cars, the first round in their series this year. In this category there are 13 entries plus two Guest drivers (Andreas Mikkelsen and Bernt Kollevold). The total of Priority drivers on the list when it finally closed on 4th February was 32 out of the total rally entry of 43.

The route itself is very similar to two years ago with one major change. The start of the rally will be on the outskirts of Oslo where there will also be a superspecial. The main technical change this year is that special winter tyres, fitted to narrow rims, are no longer allowed. All the cars on the event (which are incidentally all four wheel drive) must have the usual size 15 inch rims used for gravel rallies with special studded tyres supplied by Pirelli to suit.

Main pre-event debate centred around former Subaru team driver Petter Solberg. While he considered his options he made an entry with a blank for the type of car. Finally the decision was that he would drive an eight year old Citroen Xsara World Rally Car, fitted with an active transmission system of a type which full championship drivers may not use. There were several other potentially strong P2 entries, including the two Impreza WRC S14 cars run by the Adapta team for Mads Ostberg, the car he has driven on two national championship rallies this year, and Anders Grondal, a new car which had already been prepared for Rally Ireland but was never used. PG Andersson has entered a Fabia World Rally Car, the car in which he won the first round of the Norwegian rally championship this year.

Two types of car make their world championship debut. Patrik Sandell drives the first privately run Fabia S2000, while Anders Kjaer and Trond Lyseng drive the new entry u-level Subaru Impreza Cup Car. Monte Carlo Rally showed the potential of the Fabia, while the very wintry Rally Hadeland in Norway showed the performance of these detuned Group N cars. Andreas Mikkelsen is driving one of these cars in the Norwegian series this year, but for Rally Norway he will instead drive a full Group N car for the Russian Uspensky car, as teammate for Patrik Flodin.

Full entries for the PCWRC have not been released yet. The first published list showed 19 competitors, with widely ranging experience. Among the favourites must be Martin Prokop, Patrik Sandell, Patrik Flodin (the regular driver for the Russian Uspensky team), Armindo Araujo (again with Ralliart Italy) and Eyvind Brynildson, who now drives for Ralliart NZ which last year ran Juho Hanninen. It seems that all the Mitsubishis on this event will be Evo IXs. In Norway there are to be three Super 2000s, the Fiats for Bernardo Sousa and Jaromir Tarabus and Sandell's Skoda. Two of the five Pirelli Star Drivers have also entered the PCWRC, Martin Semerad and Mark Tapper, but only Semerad will be in Norway. This will be the 18 year old Czech driver's first winter rally.

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