ten points behind. In the World Rally Championship for Manufacturers, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT held a five-point lead over Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT. In the World Rally Championship-2 standings, Jan Kopecký and Pavel Dresler led the drivers' and co-drivers' standings by thirty-two points, but did not contest the rally. Pontus Tidemand and Jonas Andersson were in second place, thirty-eight points ahead of privateers Gus Greensmith and Craig Parry. Škoda Motorsport II held a seventeen-point lead over sister team Škoda Motorsport in the teams' championship. Newly crowned Junior World Rally Champion Emil Bergkvist led the World Rally Championship-3 drivers' standings. Denis Rådström was second, six points behind Bergkvist and Jean-Baptiste Franceschi third; Franceschi entered the rally, but did not nominate it as a round to score points. Johan Johansson held a one-point lead over Romain Courbon in the co-drivers' standings, while Tatu Hämäläinen was another eleven points behind. In the teams' championship, ACI Team Italia led Castrol Ford Team Turkiye by sixteen points. Entry list The following crews were entered into the rally. The entry list consisted of sixty crews, including eleven World Rally Car entries, fourteen entries in the World Rally Championship-2, four in the World Rally Championship-3 and nineteen in the British national championship. Calendar changes The event swapped places on the calendar with the Rally Catalunya de España. Where the 2017 rally was run as the penultimate round of the championship, the 2018 event was brought forward from the last week of October to the first week in the expectation of better weather conditions for the event. Toyota driver Jari-Matti Latvala anticipated that the change would see the rally run with stable, more-predictable temperatures than in previous years, making it easier to set the car up for the prevailing conditions. Further changes to the calendar saw the revival of Rally Turkey as a replacement for Rally Poland. The Turkish event was named as the tenth round of the championship and in light of the distance crews needed to travel from Turkey to Wales, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA)—the governing body of international motorsport—gave entrants an additional week to prepare for Rally GB compared to previous years. Route The 2018 event featured a heavily revised route from the 2017 rally. The route for the 2018 event was designed to be more challenging than the routes used in previous years. The changes were introduced in response to criticism from