Guy Wilks, British Rally Champion in 2007 and 2008, will join the British team taking on the Irish and the Germans in the Nations Cup at the Rally Show at Chatsworth on 6/7 June. He will drive the Proton Satria Neo S2000 car prepared and run by Mellors Elliot Motorsport, with which he made such a stunning debut on the Pirelli Rally in April.

Also in the British team is Steve Perez, at the wheel of the VK Ford Focus WRC07, and David Kynaston with his 3-litre Audi A3 quattro.

The Irish are represented by Kris Meeke, in his Peugeot UK S2000 207 and the Donnelly brothers, Eugene and Charlie, in a Toyota Corolla WRC and a Skoda Fabia WRC respectively. The Donnellys will be coming to Chatsworth on a high, since Eugene won the Jim Clark International Rally last weekend in the Skoda Fabia WRC.

Coming from Germany, fresh from his win on the latest round of the German Rally Championship, the Sachsen Rally, is Olaf Dobberkau, with his 380bhp Prorallye Team Porsche 911 GT3. This was the first time that a Porsche had won a German Championship rally since Manfred Hero won the 1983 Saarland Rally with a 911 SC.

Dobberkau, whose day job is running his own driving school, dealing with ordinary people seeking licences for high-performance driving on the Nurburgring, wowed the Chatsworth crowds last year with the second fastest time of the weekend in this car and is back by popular request. Joining him is Heinz-Walter Schewe with a similar, fire-breathing Porsche 911 GT3. Schewe was driving Porsches in the 1970s, when he was a frequent entrant on the RAC Rally; he was German Rally Champion in 1976. As well as his 911 GT3, he is bringing the 911 RSR with which he competes in historic rallies.

It was confirmed at the weekend that Mikko Hirvonen will be at the Rally Show at Chatsworth to drive his M-Sport Ford Focus WRC. Hirvonen currently lies third in the FIA World Rally Championship after his cruel, last-minute retirement in Argentina. He is just a single point behind Dani Sordo and will, this coming weekend in Sardinia, be hoping to regain second place and start to chase down the Championship leader, Sébastien Loeb.

Hirvonen’s visit to the third edition of the Rally Show at Chatsworth makes him the third of the Flying Finns to visit the Show. It started with the original Flying Finn, Rauno Aaltonen in 2007 and then the visit of Marcus Grönholm last year and now Hirvonen is keeping up the tradition. The twenty-eight year old was born in Jyväskylä, the town that is home to the jewel in the crown of Finnish rallying, the Rally Finland previously known as the 1000 Lakes Rally.

With a father who was already driving rally cars, it is hardly surprising then that he should show some inclination to take up the sport. That was in 1998 with a front-wheel drive Opel Kadett. Soon the whole family - his cousin and his sister both co-drove for him - were involved in furthering his career.

After so nearly winning the 2001 Finnish Championship and with help sourced by manager Timo Jouhki, he won the Finnish 2-litre championship in 2002 driving a VW Golf. That same year he drove a Citroën Saxo, a Ford Puma and a Subaru Impreza WRC in various Italian and British events, winning among others the Cumbrian Rally.

For 2003 he did a full WRC season in a Ford Focus WRC, which led to a works drive for Subaru with Prodrive in 2004 before joining Ford and M-Sport for 2005. His first WRC victory was in Australia 2006 and in 2007 he was third in the World standings behind team mate, Marcus Grönholm. In 2008, he succeeded to the position of leader in the BP Ford Abu Dhabi team and was second in the World Championship.

The scent of the Blue Oval will be strong this June at Chatsworth as there will be a special event added to the programme featuring competitors in the Kick Energy Fiesta Sporting Trophy.

This will not form part of the seven event British series but will be a knockout competition held on Saturday between the current top six classified drivers. With those six covered by less than twenty points after the first three rounds, the competition should be extremely fierce as the Fiesta drivers get to grips with Chatsworth’s tarmac roads.

Only two of the Trophy rounds are tarmac and both of those are yet to come. The prize that they will be driving for, apart from the applause of the crowds, will be a driving lesson from Mikko Hirvonen in the form of a guest co-drive over the Chatsworth stages.

Also confirmed this by Peugeot UK is that their driver and current leader of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, Kris Meeke, will be coming to the Rally Show at Chatsworth to drive the Peugeot 207 S2000.

Just last weekend, May 7th-9th, Meeke won his second IRC victory in a row at the Sata Rallye Açores, halfway across the Atlantic, and took the lead of the championship.

Meeke’s appearance at Chatsworth in June will be the only time that British rally fans will get a chance to see him in action with the Kronos Peugeot before November when he is due to enter the Rally Scotland. All but that very last round of the IRC take place in countries scattered round the globe, from Brazil to Japan and Kenya to China.

The appearance of a state-of-the art Peugeot 207 Super 2000 - heads the 2009 Manufacturer’s IRC table by twenty-nine points from Mitsubishi - is of special interest since this is the formula that will replace the current World Rally Car from 2010 as part of the cost-cutting initiatives taken by the FIA and the car manufacturers.

Twenty-nine year old Meeke started his rally career as a engineer and CAD designer with M-Sport though he needed little encouragement to get involved with rallying since his father, Sidney, had for many years prepared rally cars in Northern Ireland, in particular for Bertie Fisher. In 2000, Kris won a Peugeot competition to find new rally drivers and rapidly progressed through the Peugeot Cup.

He gained the support and backing of Colin McRae, which helped him to win the British Junior Championship of 2002 in a Ford Puma. Drives in a range of S1600 cars in the Junior World Championship followed, also with help from McRae, but individual wins were not enough to capture a title. Experience in WRCars during 2007 finally led to a drive for