Final round of the 2008 world rally championship is essentially to be based in the now traditional forests of South Wales but this year the first day will also take in stages in Mid-Wales. By using the FIA's concept of a Remote Service Park, which will be based at Builth Wells, it will be possible for the rally to revisit famous stages such as Myherin and Hafren which have not been used on the British championship round since 2000. This is a move popular with spectators, but imposes a three hours transit section immediately after the start of the rally. It also means that the competitors face 128km of special stages with no formal servicing at all, longer even than the record first day in Sweden this year. The rules of remote servicing allow only the replacement of parts which have been carried within the car, in addition to changing tyres and refuelling. Full work on the cars on Friday therefore will only be possible before the 0600 restart or on arrival back to Swansea nearly 12 hours later.

Championships waiting to be settled in Wales include:
(a) world championship for manufacturers. BP Ford Abu Dhabi start the event 11 points behind Citroen Total, effectively meaning that Ford must not only score a maximum points but also hope that Citroen have a disaster, a tall order.
(b) the Production Car Championship. Two drivers can be champion, Juho Hanninen and Andreas Aigner, advantage to the Finn. The Finn had scored on all his five previous rounds and won three times, the Austrian had won three times as well, finished once out of the points and once retired.
c) The British rally championship situation is more tricky. The first day of the WRGB serves as round 6 of the series, days 2 and 3 together serve as the final round. The brothers Mark and David Higgins are tied at the top of the table, with the challenger Guy Wilks. Wilks won the appeal and he will start the rally his chances helped by the dropped-scores rule. But the race to the title will be scrambled by the presence of three occasional BRC participants, Patrik Flodin, Juho Hanninen and Eyvind Brynildsen. These three are registered for the BRC series and can therefore deny British resident drivers of much needed points.

86 crews have entered, 21 in World Rally Cars even though the Munchi's WRC team will not be taking part, and 23 in the PCWRC division, including the Mitsubishi of Wilks. Two special attractions will be JWRC champion Sebastien Ogier's first rally in a C4 WRC and the appearance of world MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi in a Focus WRC run by M-Sport. Only three Super 2000s are on the list (Sandell's Peugeot, Tarabus' Fiat and Stephenson's MG) and only four Group R cars, all C2 R2s.

In the PCWRC there was a sudden and unexpected change when Indonesian Rally winner Gaurav Gill was announced as the replacement driver in the Sidvin PCWRC team, replacing Naren Kumar. Rossi has been given number 46, which by rights belongs this year to the Motoring Club entry of Jari Ketomaa, who this time carries number 146 instead. Starting orders however are not affected.

At the other end of the scale is another driver waiting to become a celebrity. 17 year old Tom Cave, graduate of the Junior Rallying training scheme, entered the WRGB in the hope that he would pass his street driving test before the event. He took the test nine days before the start - and happily passed!

In addition to the Mid Wales stages which have not been used on this event for many years, there are many other detailed stage route changes, in fact only one venue (stage 16/18) is exactly the same as before. The short "Walter's Arena" promotional stages run at night on Friday use stretches of stages to be used in daylight on Sunday, and they will therefore be run four times. Although in terms of numbers there are likely to be more stages run at night than last year, in terms of stage distance there will be less. This is the latest date the traditional "RAC Rally" has been held and the world championship is due to end later than any years since 1980. The event was postponed from the originally FIA approved date a few months ago, on account of unexpected non-availability of the Millennium stadium in Cardiff, the headquarters of the event and the venue for the Saturday night stadium stage.

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