Rally Finland (formerly known as the Neste Rally Finland, Neste Oil Rally Finland, 1000 Lakes Rally and Rally of the Thousand Lakes; , ) is a rally competition in the Finnish Lakeland in Central Finland. The rally is driven on wide and smooth gravel roads, featuring blind crests and big jumps. It is the fastest event in the World Rally Championship and has been dubbed the "Grand Prix of Rallying" and the "Grand Prix on Gravel". Rally Finland is among the largest annually organised public events in the Nordic countries, attracting hundreds of thousands of spectators each year. The rally has been known to be very difficult for non-Nordic drivers; only seven drivers from countries other than Finland or Sweden have won the event- in the 1980s and before, the field was made up almost entirely of Finnish and Swedish drivers. The city of Jyväskylä in the Central Finland region has often served as the main venue for Finnish rally competitions, because Rally Finland was first held under the name Jyväskylän Suurajot (Jyväskylä Grand Prix) in 1951. Originally an endurance event that stretched to Lapland in Northern Finland, the rally was at the forefront of the adoption of the modern rally format, splitting the route into a number of special stages in the mid-1950s. With increasing international attention, it became part of the European Rally Championship programme in 1959. After the start of the World Rally Championship in 1973, the event became the Finnish round in the series. Rally Finland is now among the most popular and prestigious rallies in the championship. History This rally began to gain importance in the 1970s, and local heroes such as Hannu Mikkola, Markku Alén, Timo Salonen, Tommi Mäkinen and Marcus Grönholm are the most successful names at this rally, and Swedish drivers such as Stig Blomqvist also found success at this rally. The difficulty of this rally for non-Nordic drivers made notable competitors such as Walter Röhrl (who never competed at this rally) and Miki Biasion (who only competed at this rally twice in his 15-year career) make rare or no appearances at this rally. 1950s Rally Finland was started as a quickly improvised qualifier event for the Monte Carlo Rally; thirty Finnish drivers wanted to take part in Monte Carlo, but only 14 fit within the quotas on Finns and Swedes. Previously, the entries had been decided in the Hanko Run in