Quote Originally Posted by tommeke_B View Post
Honestly I liked it more when all numbers on the entry list were earned by performance in the championship, and not randomly chosen.
It was pretty random before as well.

The champion had #1 and his team had the following numbers, then the numbers were allocated by the team championship order. The numbers were allocated for the teams, not for drivers. A team could switch drivers for their numbers. Remember how Citroen had cars 7-9 in 2017 but for example Al-Qassimi drove a different number on each of the four rallies he did? Or Neuville had #5 in 2018 although we could consider him the "number one" driver of Hyundai (Mikkelsen had #4)?

Then, before 1995, it was usually only that previous year winner had #1 and everything else was decided by the organizers.