At the half-way point of the season 135 different drivers from Formula One, Indycar, NASCAR, NHRA drag racing, and the World Rally Championship have qualified to be included in The Speed Blog driver rankings.

World Rally driver Mikko Hirvonen maintains the top spot for another month, but the gap to second placed Indycar racer Scott Dixon is closing fast.

Here’s the Top 10 standings at the end of June.

1. Mikko Hirvonen (WRC)
2. Scott Dixon (IRL)
3. Sebastian Loeb (WRC)
4. Helio Castroneves (IRL)
5. Robert Kubica (F1)
6. Fellipe Massa (F1)
7. Dan Wheldon (IRL)
8. Kimi Raikkonen (F1)
9. Tony Schumacher (NHRA)
10. Chris Atkinson (WRC)

Kyle Busch is the top ranked NASCAR driver at #13 on the list.

Once again we’ll be posting our own cross-series drivers rankings as the season progresses. However this year we’ll be making a slight change to the way we calculate the overall ranking, by focusing more on average finishing positions within individual series rather than normalizing across all series.

To qualify a driver must score a Top 10 finish in F1, IndyCar (ChampCar), NASCAR, World Rally, or make it to the final of an NHRA event.

Top 10 Drivers by the end of February 2008 are:

1. Robert Hight (NHRA)
2. Mikko Hirvonen (WRC)
3. Kyle Busch (NASCAR)
4. Gigi Galli (WRC)
5. Petter Solberg (WRC)
6. Tony Stewart (NASCAR)
7. Ryan Newman (NASCAR)
8. Jari-Matti Latvala (WRC)
9. Sebastian Loeb (WRC)
10. Greg Anderson (NHRA)

Last week Finland’s Jari-Matti Latvala became, at 22 years old, the youngest person in the sports history to win a round of the World Rally Championship, a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that this was only his second start as a works Ford driver.

Latvala began driving when he was eight years old, after receiving a Ford Escort from his father Jari Latvala, also a rally driver. At the age of ten, Latvala started practicing with an Opel Ascona on a frozen lake.  Latvala’s first world rally was the 2002 Rally Great Britain at the age of 17. He finished in 17th position with a Mitsubish Lancer Evolution VI. In 2003, Latvala competed in four WRC events with a Ford Focus. In 2004, Latvala mostly competed with an S1600 class Junior World Rally Championship car with a Group N Subaru Impreza WRX STI. In the 2005 season, Latvala competed in nine world rallies; six with the Group N Impreza and three with a World Rally Car.

In 2006, Latvala competed in 11 world rallies. He drove the Subaru Impreza WRX STI in six, a Ford Focus WRC in four and a Toyota Corolla WRC at his home event. With the Focus WRC, he recorded his career-best result by finishing fourth at the last event of the season, the Rally Great Britain and he was placed 13th overall in the drivers’ championship.

Last year Latvala competed a full 16-event programme for Stobart M-Sport Ford, where he took his first stage win and podium finish.

For 2008 Latvala joined Ford’s factory team as a number two driver, and scored his historic win at the Swedish Rally.

Official Latvala Motorsport website

Reigning World Rally champion Sebastien Loeb boosted his hopes of retaining his title by winning the Rally of Catalunya in Spain over the weekend. Citroen driver Loeb finished ahead of his team-mate Daniel Sordo, with main title rival Ford’s Marcus Gronholm in third place.

Loeb led from the first day in his Citroen C4 to pick up his sixth win of the season and 34th, a record, in all. Loeb is now just six points behind Gronholm in the race for the WRC drivers’ championship.

The Top 10 finishers were:

1. Loeb  (Citroen)
2. Sordo (Citroen)
3. Gronholm (Ford)
4. Hirvonen (Ford)
5. Duval (Citroen)
6. P. Solberg (Subaru)
7. Latvala (Ford)
8. Atkinson (Subaru)
9. Pons (Subaru)
10. H. Solberg (Ford)

I’m on the road on a business trip and having just paid a king’s ransom to log into the Hotel’s wireless network, was stunned and shocked to read about the death of rally driver Colin McRae and his young son in a helicopter crash.

I was big fan of Colin’s dad, Jim McRae, in his day as one of the UK’s top rally drivers and spent many a foggy, rainy night stood on some remote forest special stage watching him and my other rally heroes flash by.

I saw Colin in some of his first national events, but never saw him at the height of his success, other than on TV. He went on to become Britain’s first Rally Champion in 1995 and one of the sport’s greatest ambassadors.

He embraced new technology and new markets. He gave his name to one of the best racing video games that introduced millions of kids, who had never looked at the sport before, to rallying and motor sports in general. He embraced and encouraged Rallying as the latest edition to the X-Games.

Above all he was passionate about the sport of racing in all its forms having also raced at Le Mans in sports cars and tested Formula One Grand Prix cars.

Several of the tributes I’ve read describe McCRae as “fearless”, yes he was, but he was also one of the rare few natural talents who could take a car and dance with it in that supreme ballet that signifies the perfect combination of man and machine.