Twelve months after a crushing victory on the Monte Carlo Rally, Marlboro Mitsubishi Ralliart is aiming for a repeat victory on the first round of the 2000 World Rally Championship. It would be the perfect start for Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution driver Tommi Makinen as he bids for an unprecedented fifth consecutive World Championship and he can count on strong support from team-mate Freddy Loix in a Mitsubishi Carisma GT.

The Monte Carlo Rally is the oldest and widely regarded as the most prestigious round of the World Championship. First run in 1911, it remains a unique challenge, for the testing roads of the French Alps can offer anything from ice and snow to dry asphalt in mid-winter and it is not unusual to find a full range of surfaces on one special stage. It is perhaps the least predictable rally of all and certainly one of the most popular. Vast crowds from every part of Europe throng the stages and the villages through which the rally passes often treat the day as a festival.

World Champions Tommi Makinen and Risto Mannisenmaki start 2000 with high hopes. The Finnish duo won more World Championship rallies than any other crew yet again in 1999 and their Michelin-shod Lancer Evolution remains the car to beat. Makinen has high hopes of repeating his 1999 Monte Carlo victory.

"Of course Monte Carlo is always a very difficult rally and you never know what can happen, but we have done a lot of testing, in France and in Lapland, and I think we have some good solutions. The car is very nice to drive and I am looking forward to it," he said.

Belgians Freddy Loix and Sven Smeets have been hard at work preparing for the rally, covering hundreds of kilometres in testing in their Carisma GT as they prepare for this uniquely demanding event.

"The testing has been very good - a real help. On ice and snow the car was already going quite well for my style, but now we have done a big step on tarmac as well. I will start from a much better base than last year, but with Monte Carlo the most important thing is you have some luck," Loix commented.

"Once again, it's going to be a very, very tough rally, simply because of the conditions and the lottery of tyre choice. It's so easy to make a mistake on tyre choice and it is a very open event. Our car does work well in the conditions though - we've proved that a number of times - and we're aiming to get extra weather information to make tyre choice easier. Tommi's victory last year will help him of course and although Freddy had a short rally last year, the work we've done with him in the last few months has borne fruit. In the last three months of 1999, the longest time he spent out of a rally car was five days," said Marlboro Mitsubishi Ralliart team manager Phil Short.

Mitsubishi's amazing run of success has made Lancer Evolutions and Carisma GTs the most popular cars in a strong field. No fewer than 20 Mitsubishis are contesting the Group N production category - more than 20 per cent of the total entry. The hot favourite for Group N honours is Uruguay's four-times World Champion Gustavo Trelles, driving a Lancer Evolution, but he faces plenty of opposition from the likes of Austria's talented Manfred Stohl, rapid German Uwe Nittel, Slovenia's Boris Popovic and Italians Andrea Maselli and Gianluigi Galli. All of them will rate their chances - which makes it is near certain that Mitsubishi will triumph again.

This year's 1,469 kilometres Monte Carlo route features some important changes, with new stages north of Monte Carlo around Gap, which could well be affected by bad weather. There are just 15 stages altogether, but many of them are long and they total 413 kilometres. The rally begins on January 20 with the shortest leg, which takes crews from Monaco to Gap via five stages, spanning 112 kilometres. The second leg loops around Gap and could well be the toughest, as it includes the longest, 48 kilometre stage, in a total stage distance of 162 kilometres. The last leg returns to Monaco via another five stages, including one of the toughest of the rally, the notoriously unpredictable Sisteron-Thoard, and concludes with the most famous stage of all, the Col de Turini.