Just curious:

Since the vast majority of drivers are European and Asian, and the vast majority of races are in Europe and the Med, why are the cars left-hand drivers?

Because only Britian, Australia, and Japan use RHD

This was brought up a little while ago... I believe it's because the vast majority of the countries the rallies are run in are LHD countries, and I'd bet the majority of the drivers learned that way in their native countries.

-tim

Its a combination of reasons.

Basically they have settled on LHD because the majority of top drivers use LHD and if you want to take on a new driver you dont want to wait whilst he/she learns to drive on a particular side of the car.

Only britain and japan use RHD really. The rest of europe/scandinavia is LHD.

It has a much more fundemantal effect in car design too though. For example all the works escort WRC cars are LHD because they couldnt get the large 7 1/2" front diff in the car if the steering column is on the right.

I help run one of just a few RHD Escort WRC spec cars that is using the 7 1/2" front diff as we wanted to stay RHD. To make this fit we moved the engine to the left 5mm and angled the steering rack forward 20 degrees, using a Safari spec cross member. If you think about how complex these cars now are, you dont want to design around such a fundematal thing as alternate driving sides.