Rally Costa Smeralda is a rally competition held in Costa Smeralda, a coastal area on the island of Sardinia, Italy. The event was first held in 1978 and it was part of the European Rally Championship schedule until 1994. After the rally was restarted in 1998, it has been part of the Italian Rally Championship.
The rally is based in Arzachena in the north-east part of the island. Unlike the famed tarmac rally held on near neighbour the island of Corsica, the Tour de Corse, the Rally Costa Smeralda is a gravel rally. Italian drivers have long dominated the rally; the most successful driver in the rally's history is Italy's Paolo Andreucci who won the rally seven times between 2001 and 2013.
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The Costa Smeralda is a coastal area and tourist destination in northern Sardinia, Italy, with a length of some 20 km, although the term originally designated only a small stretch in the commune of Arzachena. With white sand beaches, golf clubs, private jet and helicopter services, and exclusive hotels, the area has drawn celebrities, business and political leaders, and other affluent visitors.
Olbia is a city and commune of 60,346 inhabitants in the Italian insular province of Sassari in northeastern Sardinia, Italy, in the historical region of Gallura. Called Olbia in the Roman age, Civita in the Middle Ages and the Terranova Pausania until the 1940s, Olbia has again been the official name of the city since the fascist period.
Gallura is a region in North-Eastern Sardinia, Italy.
Henri Pauli Toivonen was a Finnish rally driver born in Jyväskylä, the home of Rally Finland. His father, Pauli, was the 1968 European Rally Champion for Porsche and his brother, Harri, became a professional circuit racer.
Meridiana Fly S.p.A., operating as Meridiana, was a privately owned Italian airline headquartered in Olbia with its main base at Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport. It operated scheduled and charter flights to domestic, European and intercontinental destinations from several Italian bases. Some of its operations were carried out by the old Air Italy under the Meridiana brand. It was owned by Qatar Airways through AQA Holding (49%) and Alisarda S.p.A. (51%), who rebranded the airline as the new Air Italy effective 1 March 2018.
The Lancia Rally was a mid-engine sports car and rally car built by Lancia in the early 1980s to compete in the FIA Group B World Rally Championship. Driven by Markku Alén, Attilio Bettega, and Walter Röhrl, the car won Lancia the manufacturers' world championship in the 1983 season. It was the last rear-wheel drive car to win the WRC.
Porto Cervo is an Italian seaside resort in northern Sardinia. It is a frazione of the comune of Arzachena, in the province of Sassari. Created by a group of foreign investors around the early 1960s, Porto Cervo is the main centre of Costa Smeralda. It has a resident population of 421 inhabitants. Porto Cervo has been named one of the most expensive resorts in the world, along as being a luxury yacht magnet and billionaires' playground.
Arzachena is a town and comune in the province of Sassari, northern Sardinia, the second largest island off the coast of Italy. Arzachena lies half way between the original Costa Smeralda resort and Porto Rafael, both founded in the late 1950s. After Olbia and Tempio Pausania, it is the third largest commune in Gallura by inhabitants.
Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport is an airport in Olbia, Sardinia, Italy. It was the primary operating base for Italian airline Air Italy whose headquarters were located at the airport. It mostly handles seasonal holiday flights from destinations in Europe and is managed by Geasar S.p.A.
The European Rally Championship is an automobile rally competition held annually on the European continent and organized by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The championship has been organized since 1953 and has competed in different European countries, alternating between rallies on asphalt and gravel. It was the first supranational rally championship that was organized in the world and therefore the oldest one. In 2012 it had 60 editions and in 2013 it was renewed with the merger with the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.
Yacht Club Costa Smeralda was established by the Aga Khan in 1967. It is situated at Porto Cervo in Costa Smeralda, northern Sardinia and provides services for recreational sailors.
The Rali Vinho da Madeira is a tarmac rally held in Madeira Island, Portugal, and it is the biggest annual sporting event of the island, bringing thousands of people into the roads to watch the drivers compete through the hilly terrain and the natural landscapes. Its first edition was in 1959, having later entered the European Rally Championship in 1979, and remained in its calendar until 2012. It has also been part of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge since the championship was first held in 2006, which brought further exposure to the event as Eurosport broadcasts footage of this championship to many countries.
The ISAF Offshore Team World Championship are bi-annually since 2004 held by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Sardinia Italy and are run in cooperation with the Offshore Racing Congress.
The NACAM Rally Championship is an international rally championship which is run under the auspicies FIA and held across North and Central America, northern South America and the Caribbean. The championship was established in 2008.
The Rally Islas Canarias, known originally as the Rally El Corte Inglés is an international rallying event based on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. The event has been a long running round of the European Rally Championship, the Spanish Rally Championship and the Canary Islands Rally Championship. It has also in the recent past been a round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, the European Rally Cup South and the European Rally Cup West, and will join the World Rally Championship in 2025. The rally is a tarmac rally event and has been since inception.
The 2018 Rally Catalunya was a motor racing event for rally cars that took place between 25 and 28 October. The event was open to entries competing in World Rally Cars and cars complying with Group R regulations. It marked the fifty-fourth running of Rally Catalunya and was the twelfth round of the 2018 FIA World Rally Championship, the highest class of competition in international rallying. Seventy-six crews, including manufacturer teams and privateers, were entered to compete in the World Rally Championship, the FIA World Rally Championship-2 and FIA World Rally Championship-3 support series and the Spanish national Rally Championship and Peugeot Rally Cup Ibérica championship. The 2018 event was based in Salou in Tarragona and consisted of eighteen special stages. The rally covered a total competitive distance of a 331.58 km and an additional 1,132.79 km in transport stages.
Costa Smeralda is an Excellence-class cruise ship currently operated by Costa Cruises, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & plc. At 185,010 gross tonnage (GT), she is the largest ship commissioned for and to ever operate for Costa, and is the eighth-largest cruise ship in the world, as of 2024. Costa Smeralda is also the second cruise ship in the world to be fully powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), making Costa the second cruise line to operate a ship running on LNG, after sister brand, AIDA Cruises, became the first in 2018. Costa Smeralda has a sister ship, Costa Toscana, that was delivered in 2021. Costa Smeralda's inaugural cruise sailed on 21 December 2019.
The 2021 FIA World Rally Championship-2 is the ninth season of the World Rally Championship-2, an auto racing championship for rally cars that is recognised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile as the second-highest tier of international rallying. The category is open to cars entered by teams and complying with Rally2 regulations. The championship began in January 2021 with the Rallye Monte-Carlo and is due to conclude in November 2021 with Rally Monza, and will run in support of the 2021 World Rally Championship.
The 2021 Rally Catalunya was a motor racing event for rally cars that held over four days between 14 and 17 October 2021. It marked the fifty-sixth running of the Rally de Catalunya. The event was the tenth round of the 2021 World Rally Championship, World Rally Championship-2 and World Rally Championship-3. It also hosted as the final round of the 2021 Junior World Rally Championship. The 2021 event was based in Salou in the province of Tarragona in Catalonia and was contested over seventeen special stages totalling 280.46 km (174.27 mi) in competitive distance.
