Marcus Grönholm
Encyclopedia : M : MA : MAR : Marcus Grönholm
Marcus Grönholm (born February 5, 1968 in Kauniainen) is a rally car driver from Finland.
He won the World Rally Championship in 2000 and 2002. He also won the 2002 Race of Champions.
Grönholm featured in various bit-part roles in the world series throughout the 1990s, most notably with Toyota with whom he drove Celicas and Corolla WRCs. It was only when he joined championship newcomers Peugeot for 1999 that he began to enjoy such meteoric success. He took his first championship win on the 2000 Swedish Rally with the 206 WRC. After an irksome and unsuccessful championship defence in 2001 during which assorted mechanical problems kept him down to 4th overall in the points table, he easily won his second title in 2002, at times displaying Michael Schumacher-esque dominance.
For the 2006 season, Grönholm switched to the Ford team, driving their all-new 2006-specification Focus WRC. On his debut, in January, he won his first ever tarmac rally in Monte Carlo, beating Sébastien Loeb by over a minute. He followed this up with a win in the second event of the season, Sweden.
In his teens Grönholm was fond of motocross as a recreational activity, but a serious knee injury forced a switch to boxing.
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.