Of the rest, around 17 will battle it out for Group N honours, while a further twelve will be in contention for the A7 class victory.
Route:
The rally retains many of last year's innovations while adding several more for 2008. The opening three days are based in Valence, but then the event heads south to Monaco for a fourth day of action high above the Principality in the mountains of the Alpes Maritimes. This is the only WRC round to run four full days' competition.
Thursday evening's opening action is in darkness throughout and heads into the Vercors mountains, east of Valence. On Friday the route moves south-west of the city into the Ardèche before Saturday's longest day of the rally north-west of Valence. A free transit section takes competitors to Monaco before Sunday's final loop, which brings the return of the legendary Col de Turini after a year's absence.
After the success of last year's test, the rally ends with a short super special stage around the harbour area of Monaco's Grand Prix circuit. Drivers tackle 19 stages in total, covering 365.09 kilometres in a route of 1481.25 kilometres.
Last year:
Sebastien Loeb lead the Rallye Monte Carlo from start to finish in 2007, stamping his authority on proceedings from the off, when he won both the night stages that made up the very short leg 1.
In the end the Frenchman comfortably won by 38.2 seconds, to take his fourth victory at the Principality and to equal the record held by held by Sandro Munari, Walter Rohrl and Tommi Makinen - all of whom have also won the Rallye Monte Carlo four times.
Daniel Sordo was runner-up in the sister
Citroen, while Marcus Gronholm took the final place on the podium unable to match the pace of the C4's.
Chris Atkinson came in fourth for
Subaru, overhauling
Mikko Hirvonen in the final test, with
Petter Solberg,
Toni Gardemeister and Jan Kopecky rounding out the points' scorers in 6th, 7th and 8th respectively.
There was only one major retirement - namely
Jari-Matti Latvala, who retired his Focus after SS14 due to roll-cage damage.
