This will be the sixth time that Italy's world championship rally has been run in Sardinia. The ceremonial start on Thursday evening will be outside the City Hall in Olbia, the headquarters town of the event, but cars go for the finish on Sunday to Porto Cervo in the Costa Smeralda coastal region in the north east of the island. There are many detailed changes in the route this year. There is now only one stage in the north of the island, the final stage, this is on the way up to Porto Cervo. The stages are otherwise completely centred in the wooded hills in the centre of the island, north of Nuoro, where two of the stages on the second day will be completely new. One of these is being run along an old disused railway line, the other uses traditional tricky Sardinian roads. Main organisational novelty concerns spectator control. Instead of demarcating spectator-forbidden areas by red tape (loathed by professional photographers!) there will instead be areas marked out by green tape within which spectators must stand.

As round six in the 2009 twelve rally series, this is the half way point in the world championship. In both the drivers and the makes series, the blue, red and white Citroen team continue to be dominant. In the drivers series Loeb and Sordo are lying 1-2, while non championship Citroen driver Petter Solberg is lying fifth. There are two major records which can be broken in Sardinia. If Loeb wins, this will be his seventh successive world rally win, breaking his own record. And if Citroen wins, this will be their seventh successive win, breaking the record of six shared by Lancia in 2005 and Mitsubishi in 1998/99. The last non Citroen world rally victory was Hirvonen's in Japan in 2008. For this event Ford have built a new car for Hirvonen while Latvala takes over the car which Hirvonen drove in Portugal. Latest news from Citroen Junior team is that a decision about Sebastien Ogier's future has been deferred until after Acropolis.

Both the Production Car and Junior series are already into the second half of the season. Rules state that these championship drivers must enter six of the eight events, Sardinia is round 5. All the top championship drivers in both series have already contested three of the first four events except for Martin Prokop in the JWRC series. This is the only time this season that all nine registered drivers in the JWRC will compete against each other. Patrik Sandell had a pre-Sardinia test in Austria in his Skoda S2000 when it was wet, hoping this year's Sardinia will break its tradition of always being a dry event! Only major PCWRC news are reported contractual difficulties which have forced Indian driver Gaurav Gill to miss the Sardinia world championship rally. His entry has been taken over by the German privateer Hermann Gassner Junior.

This will be the second time the five Pirelli Star Drivers appear in their six-event programme of world championship events with their Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X cars. Their first outing was in Portugal where the Finnish driver Jarkko Nikara was fastest and even scored one scratch time in Group N while South African Jon Williams showed the relevance of his experiences back home when he was the only one of five to complete the route. Some suspension strengthening has been implemented following weaknesses shown in Portugal.

Many recent news items come from Norway. Petter Solberg's eight year old Xsara WRC will appear in Sardinia with a revised nose section, which improves the under bonnet cooling. This modification first appeared on the Kronos run works cars in Mexico 2006 where Sebastien Loeb broke a spell of bad luck and went on to win his next five rallies... A disastrous time control error on the recent national championship Sorland Rally cost Ole Kristian Unnerud his seat beside Norwegian driver Mads Ostberg, after they had won every stage and finished three minutes in front. This gifted victory to the team's great rival Andreas Mikkelsen who was driving a Subaru Cup car. Andreas meanwhile had entered Sardinia in a Fabia WRC but this was later withdrawn. For Sardinia Mads' codriver will be Veronica Engan, the former codriver for Eyvind Brynildsen and Bernt Kollevold. Meanwhile fellow Norwegian Henning Solberg has been seen in unusual company. He was competing on the EVS Viking Rally, a promotional event for zero-emission vehicles, in a hydrogen powered Ford Focus road car. He was in the codriver's seat while his car was being driven by Crown Prince Haakon!

The entry list shows 60 crews but only one Italian car, a Fiat Grande Punto S2000 driven by the Portuguese driver Bernardo Sousa, and none of the regular Italian championship drivers will take part on this event. WRC-wise, the entry however is amazingly strong, with no fewer than 41 priority drivers of whom 33 are registered championship competitors, including two of the five Pirelli Star Drivers. The most important technical novelty at the event will be the first public appearance of the Ford Fiesta R2 rally car, which will be run as a zero car driven by Matthias Boon.

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